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SOME LETTERS 

1917-1918 



SOME LETTERS 

WRITTEN TO 

MAUDE GRAY and MARIAN WICKES 

1917-1918 



BY 

KATHERINE BLAKE 



NEW YORK 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 
1920 






COPTEIGHT, 1920, BT 

KATHERINE BLAKE 



OCT 2\ 1320 



THE SCRIBNER PRESS 



©CU601031 



These letters are printed as they were written 
from France in those dark days of that last long 
year of the war. 

They can pretend to no literary qualities — they 
are only the truthful record of one who lived 
through that terrible ordeal with the English and 
the French. 

May this little book bring into the hearts of my 
compatriots a little more of our hereditary pride 
in Great Britain's courage and a little more of our 
glory in having shared in the victory of France's 
valiant spirit. 



SOME LETTERS 

1917-1918 



SOME LETTERS 

November 9, 1917. 

I am back at visiting the hospital and have a 
position at the mairie; an interesting work this 
last, but it takes it out of me. I have to give so 
much. You see, I take the official notification of 
death of this arrondissement to the nearest rela- 
tive and get the papers filled in. Some days I 
go from the rich to the poor with such violent 
transitions that it seems incredible such extremes 
live so near each other. 

I think I know the slums here now . . . some 
places are like illustrations to Eugene Sue's books. 
One day I had to break the news of her only son's 
death to a poor old woman . . . cook to a bache- 
lor gentleman, and she sat rocking herself and 
saying only her daughter could comfort her. 
Well, the daughter was working in a laundry at 
the other side of Paris, but I found her and drove 
her to her mother and had the satisfaction of 
seeing that she had what she wanted. 

The girl had no hat, an old black shawl on her 
head, and I don't believe she had ever ridden in 
a motor in her life. 

Suddenly she spoke: "You are kind to us, you 
3 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

rich, but we must help each other these days." 
I answered: "Our hearts are the same, we are 
suffering with the same sorrows." 

Oh, what I have seen sometimes makes me 
ache all through. These women are so brave, I 
could not suffer like that and bear it as they do. 

And at the hospital it's the same. These peo- 
ple are the real people of France, those who are 
conquering. They are the ones who put "Bolo- 
ism" to shame. What the outcome of all those 
scandals will be, I know not, but sometimes their 
possibihties frighten me, for it makes the people 
blind mad to know such things exist. If only 
they could clear all the scandals up and let the 
censorship remain on the shelf for a while, it 
would be better. A little knowledge is so danger- 
ous. 

They say here that Clemenceau will be the 
next Cabinet maker. He is a fighter and no 
mistake. 

Russia's news to-day seems fantastic; I heard 
this afternoon the news had come that Kerensky 
had run away and no one knows where he has 
run to, and Mrs. L. told me she had received a 
letter from one of the Grand Dukes, saying the 
Czar was glad to go to Tobolsk to get his eldest 
daughter away from St. Petersburg as Kerensky 
wanted to marry her and make himself Czar. 

Somebody told me the United States and Japan 
4 



KATHERINE BIAKE 

were going to jointly handle the Russian prob- 
lem What price will Japan ask? She asked 
high before-too high for the Allies to use her. 
Now, with Italy's situation everybody is gloomy 
except me. I think this Itahan coup was Ger- 
many's last card to make it appear she was still 
victorious and to retain her control of Austria, 
Turkey and Bulgaria. Then, before America is 
ready, to get peace, her peace. The pessimists 
say if Russia makes peace, a million German pris- 
oners will be released ... but what good will 
these men be after years in Russian prisons ? 

And Italy ? I can't write what I think of that 
situation. But Cordona's order to shoot desert- 
ers seems to prove that he has been up against 
cowardice, to say the least. 

Are the Germans aiming to conquer Italy and 
to get to Greece and put Constantine back? It 
would seem the Kaiser has three hopes: to restore 
the Czar, to restore Constantine and to frighten 
us all into making peace before our American 
troops are in the battle. . 

An EngUshman said to me today, and he is 
just back from Passchendaele Ridge: "We know 
the Germans are beaten, Russia and Italy may 
delay the final victory, but we've got them. 
And the French soldier speaks the same way. 

They say the Germans are planning great air 
raids over Paris for the spring but surely by then 

5 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

our aviation ought to be frightening them and 
knocking their marvellous Mercedes engines into 
kingdom come. 

The American Red Cross seems to be sending 
workers over on every ship. I wish they would 
use the French women more than they do. There 
are many ladies in Paris in grand uniforms and 
many others going to the front, God knows why 
and how. 

Even in the earthquake we are living in there 
are things to make me smile, but always there are 
tears in my soul. It's all frightful to me, this 
suffering, sometimes I cannot bear it. You over 
there don't know. Your complacent newspapers 
irritate me. 

March 5, 1917. 

Yesterday morning I had a paper to deliver 
from the mairie to a certain man. A harmless 
paper, only the official confirmation of the death 
of a young soldier on the battlefield in 1914. I 
went to the address. It was a small saloon. 
The place was crowded. A woman came forward 
and asked me my business. 

"Come this way." We went into a back sa- 
loon, empty and dark. I gave her the paper with 
the necessary instructions. 

"I will attend to this instead of my father," 
she said, "if madame will wait. You see it was 
this way. My father-in-law had three sons, one 

6 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

was killed, the other reported killed and the third 
taken prisoner. The news all came to him in 
one morning. He went crazy and now he is 
childish and nearly blind. We had hoped against 
hope that the second son was not really killed. 
This paper settles it." 

She left me and went into another room to fill 
in the paper while I waited. 

A halting step came down the hall and a man, no 
more than forty, but bent and blind and very old, 
groping his way with a cane, came into the room. 

"Are you the lady with the paper? Tell me, 
where can I go and get my little boy's watch ? I 
gave it to him long ago. If he is dead, really 
dead, they must have it at the mairie. 

"I want the watch . . . you see I am blind be- 
cause they are all gone, my poor little boys, and 
it doesn't really matter that I am blind for I have 
nothing to see any more . . . but oh, I want that 
watch." 

What could I say or do to help him.'* Just 
nothing but sit there with him and his daughter- 
in-law and weep with them and then go away and 
into my own world again. 

But we must win this war and crush this terri- 
ble menace out of civilization. I have told you 
this small story but if I wrote all I have seen . . . 
always silent courage, never a murmur, often 
"on les aura" even in their tears. 

7 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Tell this story over there to some of those who 
don't understand. 

Paris, November 15, 1917. 

I do not think the American newspapers give a 
correct idea of things as they are. And I think it 
absolutely necessary for our people to appreciate 
the fact that America must help and help soon. 

If it had not been for Russia and Italy, the war 
was won. Austria and Turkey were on the brink 
of separate peace. 

We are a one-man machine. Lloyd George's 
speech yesterday struck the "nail on the head." 
I hope you have read it. I have absolute faith 
in our ultimate victory, but I feel this hour is a 
serious one and that our American politicians 
don't appreciate anything. The congressional 
party now touring over here is, I hear, quite dread- 
ful. I don't believe they are seeing much. I am 
absolutely opposed to useless people coming over 
here and eating French food and using French 
coal and not doing anything to make it worth 
while. 

I am opposed to the invasion of the A. R. C. 
and the Y. M. C. A. workers in their grand uni- 
forms and the ladies in their Sam Brown belts 
and the canteen workers who bring their own 
maids with them to look after them and keep 
their boots polished. I am opposed to lots of 
things because, although the intentions are excel- 

8 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

lent, they are useless. No man and certainly no 
woman, ought to come over here unless they have 
definite and necessary work to do which they will 
stick to. I wish I could talk to you about many 
things. 

We have some good men. Foch and Petain are 
first-class. So was Nivelle. 

Paris, December 27, 1917. 

An old friend of mine who married a Russian 
reached Paris a short time ago. She managed to 
get out of Russia with her children and her hus- 
band is now in Stockholm on his way here too. 
He had great difficulty because he is a noble and 
Lenin and Trotsky won't let aristocrats out of 
the country. She was in Petrograd during the 
first two revolutions. Now she says she cannot 
understand the pessimism and nervousness she 
meets with here about the much-talked-of Ger- 
man advance with what they have on the Rus- 
sian front and in Russia as prisoners. She says 
the Germans have not had anything much on the 
Russian front since Verdun. They discounted 
Russia with the fall of Broussiloff. As for the 
prisoners, she says one-third are tuberculous, one- 
third are busy and satisfied, and one-third may 
go back to Germany; but that Germany will have 
to send an army into Russia to get them out if 
she wants them. 

Further, she said that for a long time Germany 
9 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

had not been able to get food out of Russia, as 
there is no food to spare and transport is impossi- 
ble. Chaos everywhere and no sign of law and 
order. Some of the farmers may go with the 
Germans out of sheer fear of the Bolshevists and 
hoping the Germans will restore order and give 
them a chance to work and feed their families. 
She says the great bulk of the people are too 
ignorant to know anything about the Allies and 
victory and defeat. They say that war is 24 
hours away from them and that they want peace 
and food and no more revolutions. 

So here you have Russian news which is not as 
discouraging for the cause of the Allies as it 
might be. She seemed to think more harm than 
good would come to Germany out of the Russian 
business. 

To answer you about other matters. I can 
only repeat what I have said before: these com- 
ing three or four months are the most difficult 
because of London and Paris. The morale of 
the soldiers of both the British and French front 
is fine. 

I don't believe the Germans have the strength 
in men and artillery that they had at Verdun, 
but I think they will try a hit at several points 
at once, hoping to force an issue before spring. 
We shall see. 

Italian news is better. The French and English 
10 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

are backing up the Italians and I doubt if there is 
any more treason there. They tell me the Ger- 
mans paid the Russian and Italian traitors with 
money they printed as they needed it with their 
own presses. 

General Pershing visited Joe's hospital on 
Christmas eve. He went all over it and delighted 
the French blesses by speaking to them in French. 

Paris, January 16, 1918. 

I have not at all your point of view about the 
war. See this way: the Russian peace is not yet 
settled and probably won't be unless Germany 
licks the country into it. The German people 
were promised an immediate peace with Russia. 
They aren't getting it. The Germans are mass- 
ing men and artillery all along our front, prob- 
ably for an attack on either flank — Calais and 
Belfort. 

The English and French say they can hold. 
That the Germans may advance at some point 
for several kilometers. Nothing much. Deadlock. 

The German people have been promised a 
decisive victory at once on this front. If they 
don't get it . . . then what.^^ 

The German people are told that their soldiers 
are fighting for the country's future commercial 
life — Wilson and Lloyd George say there will be 
no commercial war after the war. The leaders 

11 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

see our papers; they — some of them — represent a 
peace party — then what ? 

French poHtics are better now than before. 
Clemenceau is honest. The army likes him. 
Caillaux is in jaiL Our troops are coming over in 
thousands. 

Given the foregoing facts, I see a defensive few 
months and then an American attack. The end 
in 1918. But we must deal a smashing blow. 
There must be a military victory. 

The French morale is better now than ever, so 
is the English. Don't judge either nation by 
Londoners or Parisians. 

To answer your questions about religion: all 
forms of religion are a help to men who are con- 
stantly facing death, and more men follow their 
creeds than before the war. The French priests 
are not like the Belgian and Italian priests — I am 
told these are no good. It is even claimed they 
are dangerous. 

I have arranged for both Catholic and Episcopal 
services in the hospital every Sunday. The army 
chaplain in Paris is a professor from Groton. He 
calls on me when necessary and we cooperate 
with each other. So do I and the Catholic priests 
get on. 

Paris, January 30, 1918. 

The German offensive is expected in February. 
The army men say they are not going to get any- 

12 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

where. The Russian peace, especially the Ukrain- 
ian peace, hangs fire. Wait and see what Austria 
does. I see daylight ahead and should not be 
surprised if victory brought an Allied peace, not a 
German one, before January, 1919. 

Things all look better and the Italian situation 
is clear. 

Paris, January 31, 1918. 

My first idea this morning was to send you a 
cable to let you know your husband is in Paris 
and that we were unhurt last night. 

For two hours the guns and the bombs thun- 
dered. The bombs struck near here with a sick- 
ening noise that hurt me in the pit of my stomach : 
a horrid sensation. In a house a few blocks 
away the two top floors were demolished, but con- 
sidering the numbers of German Fokkers, the 
damage was slight in Paris. 

I saw most of the places this morning. Every- 
where the people were furious and incensed. They 
were out in the streets in crowds, swearing revenge. 

A friend of mine in the police told me about 
things and the official communique is to be pub- 
lished in the evening papers. 

I suppose we can expect them every night for a 
while. 

The Fokker which dropped the bombs not far 
from here flew so low over this house that we 
could hear the engines distinctly. We all stayed 

13 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

in our rooms. The children slept all through it, 
but I did not. 

Paris, March 8, 1918. 

Of course the French will be only too glad to 
welcome Americans over here after the war — they 
want them even now. There is already a "Divi- 
sion" of American women here. Wives and mis- 
tresses camouflaged in the A. R. C. and the 
Y. M. C. A. 

There is so much tragedy in the world and so 
much sadness that sometimes it does me good to 
smile at the ladies and the dollars. Not the least 
important chapter of the war will be the account 
of how the army discovered society. As I ob- 
serve current events I remember hearing my 
mother speak of how a certain prominent family 
discovered society in the 80's. It would seem 
that they had found it more difficult than the 
army is finding it. 

Don't believe for a moment that Christopher 
Columbus died childless. Some day, somewhere 
we'll talk and speak the truth ! Whatever you 
read in Wadsworth's speech might be applied to 
what I am talking of. . . . I've a good many 
more "if's" than you wrote and only hope they 
will not be written in red ink. We've got a big 
chance to do a big work and I hope to see the 
best of our country able to find expression iii 
activities intelligently used to win our war. 

14 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

I refuse to worry about Russia. Let that 
drunken harlot drag Germany into her whirlpool. 
Germany is presently going to have a giant polit- 
ical indigestion. "Just wait and see," to quote 
old Asquith. 

Paris, March 9, 1918. 

While we were at a friend's house last night the 
raid started. The guns boomed and every now 
and then that sickening thud, the sound of a 
dropping bomb. We sat around the fire until 
half-past eleven when there was a lull and we 
came home through pitch darkness. Our hostess 
moved her children to the cellar. I am afraid of 
cellars. If the house comes down it means burial 
alive. 

This morning I went to see the damage. In 
one place a bomb had exploded in the street. 
Every window in every house in the entire block 
was shattered. In another street two bombs had 
gone through a house. It was a fearful mess. 

Three other places I saw which I could not de- 
scribe without saying more than I ought to. 

Last night we were well defended, but the Ger- 
mans seemed to come in relays. However they 
got here I can't see for the barrage was terrific 
and the city absolutely black. 

The people are incensed, just as they were the 
last time, and again I fail to see the good the 
Germans get out of it. The proprietor of this 

15 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

house who was ill in bed, died of fright. His 
house was not struck but a bomb exploded near 

by. 

This time they did not seem to get very far into 
Paris, I mean our part of it. The children slept 
all through it. 

I only hope those devils won't come back to- 
night. I wish I could work a barrage gun on 
them. 

Fortoiseau, March 16, 1918. 

The night of the last raid at dinner we were dis- 
cussing raids and the chances of the Gothas 
returning. One guest started it and another was 
certain we were in for it. In the midst of our 
conversation the signal sounded and Joe went 
over to the hospital. The rest of us stayed 
together. 

It was pretty bad, and I must say I felt sick at 
heart sitting there seeing my babies in my mind's 
eye being wounded or killed. Most of the explo- 
sions sounded very near. It lasted a long time. 
My guests emphatically advised me to move the 
children away and although I hated the idea of 
doing it, I knew it was crazy to keep them in 
Paris when I had a perfectly good place to take 
them to. 

The next morning the cook and kitchen maid 
gave notice. They wouldn't stay in Paris and I 
think every other servant wanted to do the same. 

16 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

When Joe came back from the hospital that 
night he told me that I must go to Fortoiseau. 
He said he could not do his work at the hospital 
when every time he heard an explosion the fear 
came into his heart that the children and I might 
be hurt. 

So the next day I made my arrangements to 
move down here and then I went to see some of 
the damage. 

One bomb fell right in front of the German 
embassy and blew in the doors and smashed all 
the windows. The H. L.'s live next door to this 
embassy. All their windows were smashed and 
their gas, electricity and water went out of com- 
mission. H. was in the front yard in dark green 
pajamas, unkempt, unshaven, unwashed but very 
grateful for sympathy. 

I wish I felt my letter would reach you if I told 
you details of where bombs hit. I think it is 
safer not to write. Believe me, after I saw what 
I did I was certain the children must be taken 
out of the city. Thursday I got off. 

Yesterday there was a big explosion in a sub- 
urb. In our apartment some of the windows 
were broken, some furniture was smashed, so I 
think I got my babies out just in time. 

The house here is all in a mess. Leaks in the 
plumbing and the furnace, no hot water nor heat. 

I only wish I felt Baker was going to see things 
17 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

as they are and hear the truth. I fear he will 
say and in fact think, that "everything is lovely." 

We Allies are up against it and we Americans 
have got to do more and better in all branches of 
our service over here if we are to lick the Ger- 
mans. France and England need us and our help 
and not "just lovely" Baker statements. 

The French are very polite and so are the 
English, but it must shock them to see some of 
the things I see. . . . 

Joe telephoned me he dined with a couple of 
British officers one night and they were very 
enthusiastic about our men in the fighting line, 
so that's good news. They told Joe it was only 
right to get the children out of Paris as everyone 
expects more raids, but they were quite optimis- 
tic about what is coming to the Germans. 

The country looks ready to bud, the violets 
are out and spring has come over the earth. This 
house is charmingly old fashioned and we are 
moderately comfortable, but I had rather be in 
Paris. I get frantic at being so far away from 
news. But those raids . . . 

By the way, the cook and the kitchen maid 
have decided to stay as they consider this place 
safe. 

Fortoiseau, March 19, 1918. 

Joe has just telephoned me that they expect 
160 wounded and gassed at the hospital this 

18 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

evening. It makes me sick to think of it. Per- 
sonally, and in spite of most of the wise ones to 
the contrary, I believe the Germans will attack 
on this front and it will be a terrible battle too, 
and may decide the war in our favor. If not, 
why then I can only see victory for us in the air. 
The American newspapers don't seem to visual- 
ize things over here at all. They worry me, only 
perhaps nobody over there believes them any 
more. 

Fortoiseau, March 28, 1918. 

So my prophecy was right and the German 
offensive was launched. You have no idea of the 
days of anxiety, nay anguish, I have been living 
through. 

The onslaught was terrific beyond belief. The 
line had to retreat, and not until yesterday did I 
feel sure the Germans would fail to get their 
objective, namely, Amiens, break the English 
communications, reach Calais and advance near 
enough to Paris to use their guns on the city. 

For three days I sat here wondering whether I 
ought to take the children in the motor and fly 
to Tours, shuddering over what would happen if 
they took Paris. . . . 

Joe was at Chalons. They were bad days and 
sleepless nights. I am glad they are over. Joe 
telephoned me yesterday after his return he had 
been to the Ministry on some official business and 

19 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

they told him things were better. He had also 
seen a British officer who had told him the same. 
Now I feel the worst is over and as soon as the 
French throw in their reserves the whole situation 
will change. Now I feel the Allies will hold them, 
and because the Germans are held, they have lost 
their great last throw of the dice. 

France and England have won without us. 
Baker's rosy interviews seem so dreadfully ludi- 
crous. One year in the war, and only two thou- 
sand troops in the fighting line. My God ! it is 
not in 1919, but yesterday that our help was 
needed, not words, not promises, but men and 
guns. Organization here, organization at home. 
That's what we want. 

Yesterday morning H. appeared here. He 
came to tell me he didn't consider Fontainebleau 
any longer safe. He came to warn me. He had 
seen B. in Paris early yesterday morning, who 
had said the next forty-eight hours would decide. 
They are up to-morrow morning. 

Do you realize what all this means ? Had the 
British and French armies really broken, it was 
the end of the war, a German victory and a Ger- 
man peace . . . and America not here to help. 
What life would be to all of us under those con- 
ditions you must know and I am writing you 
after the worst and with hope and confidence in 
my heart. Bombardments from Gothas and 

20 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

quack long-distance guns are trivial incidents 
compared with what has been going on, on the 
battlefields. The French reserves have been held 
back because they were not sure the Germans 
would not launch another big attack upon Cha- 
lons. One thing to feel is, that Germany can 
never do this again. She stakes everything in 
this attack. She stands to gain all or lose all. 
Now, I feel she has lost. The fighting may keep 
on but that terrible onslaught with hundreds of 
thousands of men following each other in thick 
packed waves mowed down over and over again, 
but always coming on in overwhelming numbers, 
that onslaught Germany can never repeat. 

Not the least agony through these nights was 
the knowledge that Joe was down there in Cha- 
lons, with bombs going day and night. I lay 
through the dark hours sweating. 

You are lucky not to have your husband in 
danger. If anything happens to mine, and mind 
you every minute he is down where he is in dan- 
ger, I shall go mad. There are worse things than 
not getting letters . . . and I am only one wife 
in many thousands. 

Fortoiseau, April 2, 1918. 

Two Frenchmen lunched with me today, one is 
in the War Office. Most of their news was of a 
political character, which, unless you were very 
much in touch with English and French politics, 

21 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

would not interest you. One of them told me the 
First Division is in the fight. Also that another 
tremendous offensive within ten days is expected 
from Ludendorf . One must face the possibility of 
the Germans taking Hazebrouck, Amiens and 
perhaps Calais, and the probability that the Allies 
will prevent it. In any case, these men were cer- 
tain that the British and the French armies will 
neither be defeated nor separated. They told me 
that Castelneau is really up north seeing that 
Foch's plans are being carried through. Both 
Frenchmen said the British were fighting like 
heroes. Some day I'll tell you more of what they 
told me. 

Fortoiseau, Sunday, April 7, 1918. 

I have just been talking to a friend of ours in 
Paris. He was very non-committal. Did he 
think the worst was over.? I asked. He couldn't 
tell — the news didn't look good. Did he think 
they would take Paris .^^ He couldn't say — no- 
body knew anything. "Well," I said, "then you 
are gloomy and pessimistic over the situation .f^ " 
"No," he said emphatically, "I'm not. When I 
see you I will talk to you." 

These days are anxious ones. 

I went into Paris yesterday and saw several 
people. 

Somebody saw the First Division on Monday 
on its way to the front. He watched the trains 

22 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

passing the railroad platform upon which he 
stood, crowded with Americans cheering, shout- 
ing and waving American flags. These are the 
veterans of our army over here, being the men 
who came over in July. This particular unit is 
to go in an army of Foch's which has not yet gone 
into action. I know about where they are. 

It has been arranged that any American 
wounded will be evacuated back to Paris where 
beds are being prepared. There has been a coun- 
cil about the plans. Joe is not to return to Cha- 
lons as he will have many hundreds of beds under 
his care in Paris. He may go to the front with a 
tent hospital. That will be decided in the next 
two days. But even in that case his main work 
will be in the city of Paris. 

Chaumont places the German losses at seven 
hundred and fifty thousand as against an outside 
figure of two hundred thousand Allied losses. 
This is the highest loss Germany has yet sustained 
and it has materially reduced her numerical 
superiority over us. She still has one hundred 
and ninety -two divisions, but some of them have 
been reduced to five thousand men. The Allies' 
reserves are still untouched: that is, the British 
reserves which have been coming across the Chan- 
nel, and Foch's army placed at one million, two 
hundred thousand men. 

The situation seems to be that the Germans 
23 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

will launch another formidable attack, probably 
north, near Lille, where their lines of communica- 
tion are best. Their aim is Calais, even if it costs 
them five hundred thousand men. They won't 
get Calais. After they have shown their hand — 
watch Foch. 

They may get Amiens, but our American engi- 
neers have built three railroads back of the city 
and communications are established. Had the 
Germans taken Amiens at first, the situation of 
Paris would have been serious. No coal, which 
would mean the closing of all usines de guerre 
and the practical halt of daily life. 

The story of the Fifth Army cannot be written 
now, but it was a situation due to General Gough 
who, apparently, underestimated the German 
attack and overestimated the aid he could expect 
from the French when he extended his lines. 
The men were magnificent. Gough has been 
relieved. Paris had as close a call as in 1914. 
Some day I'll tell you the story. 

Every one seems to think heavy fighting is 
ahead and many weeks of anxiety, but the Ger- 
mans will be checked. Do you remember some 
time ago I wrote you that if an offensive came 
off and the Germans were checked, it would be 
victory for the Allies ^ Watch how things go. 

This will shorten the war, but we must achieve 
a military victory. Our guns are arriving, are 

24 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

here, somebody told me, as well as our aeroplanes. 
I know our men are coming. Speed up over 
there, come over and win. 

The British lost none of their big railroad guns 
and the American Red Cross lost very few sup- 
plies. I was told but one camion. 

Paris gave me a shock yesterday. I have 
never seen it so empty. Street after street has 
every apartment closed. All the iron shutters 
are up. In our street the only apartment open is 
ours. 

Many shops are closed, large and small. I 
walked down the Rue de la Paix and it was like 
a day in mid-summer before the war. Every- 
thing closed, hardly a dozen people in the street. 
All the streets are the same. The city seemed 
dreary and empty. Most of the windows are 
criss-crossed with paper ,to save the glass. The 
Arc de Triomphe statuary, the colonne Vendome 
and many other monuments are covered with 
sandbags and boarded in. Every now and then 
you see a sign "abri" — so many places. Oh, I 
don't want to go in town again, it makes me too 
sad. 

Fortoiseau, April 13, 1918. 

The American papers seem to say very little 
about the raids, so you may not have realized 
their severity. There was a lively one last night 
and quite some damage was done. The bombs 

25 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

struck the Rue de Rivoli quarter. A long-range 
gun was going again yesterday and the day before. 
The Maternity Hospital was struck and the result 
was useless butchery of women and new-born 
babies. This kind of warfare is sickening and 
there is no military reason to excuse it. 

To answer your last letter I most certainly do 
see an end to this war, but there is hard fighting 
to be faced. The Germans are terribly strong 
and from all sides I hear Ludendorf is their very 
best general. Foch is quite able to handle him, 
and is proving it now, by not launching a counter- 
offensive and waiting for the surely coming thun- 
dering German blow, in either the Noyon or 
Amiens sector. They've been pounding at the 
English in the north with moderate success. I 
have reason to believe that General Castelneau is 
up there to-day with three French divisions to 
aid the English reenforcements. 

The hardest blow is undoubtedly yet to come, 
probably during April. They say there are close 
on sixty untouched German divisions massed be- 
hind the army facing Amiens. That is what 
Foch is watching. By the time this letter reaches 
you, the war news ought to be better for us. 
The Americans in the southern part of the line 
seem to have done well. 

The New York newspapers which reached me 
yesterday made me shiver. They had no ap- 

26 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

preciation of the situation from March 21 to 
March 29. And even now, the critical period is 
not over, and won't be, until the Germans are so 
checked that they cannot advance any distance 
anywhere. The Washington interviews are shock- 
ing. It's almost as if those people thought the 
head-liners were exaggerating, instead of under- 
stating actual facts. 

Fortoiseau, April 17, 1918. 

From your letters it is obvious that you do not 
appreciate the raids. The Times and Tribune 
received yesterday showed us how little is pub- 
lished. Believe me, the raids must have been 
really bad for me to move down here. 

You don't know how terrible the fighting up 
north is. The attacks on the British are formi- 
dable in violence and numbers. The Germans 
seem to launch new divisions against them every 
other day. Today the news is not so good, the 
Germans have taken Baleuil. I feel very con- 
fident that the British line will not be broken, and 
that Foch is equal to Ludendorf, but neverthe- 
less, these are terrible days and it is too dreadful 
for an American to be obliged to appreciate, as 
one does here at close range, how shamefully little 
the United States is able to do. What are two 
hundred and fifty thousand men in the fighting 
line as a real help against Germany's millions? 
It's all very well to talk about next year, in fact 

27 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

it is "rot," all this complacent talk in Washing- 
ton. It would have been better if Mr. Wilson 
had conferred with General Wood and listened 
to what he had to tell him about what he saw 
over here. I suppose he has seen Mrs. X. and 
listened to her. Heard just what he wanted to 
hear; nice, comfortable, optimistic talk. But op- 
timism at this terrible time won't win the war. 

Fortoiseau, April 27, 1918. 

B. came down last night. He had seen Colonel 
M. He thought it was a shame that M. should 
be running a bombing school at Toul. With his 
intelligence he should be in a directing and high 
official position. 

B. told me that nobody over in America had 
realized the gravity of the situation over here 
from March 21st on. Apparently, nobody under- 
stood what was going on. But, I said, they only 
had to look at the map ! It seems when B. 
arrived in Bordeaux he struck a particularly 
gloomy crowd, who gave him some very alarming 
talk, so that he was rudely awakened from the 
point of view he had had in New York. He says 
the people he sees do not think now that Paris 
will be taken, but they do feel there are hard times 
ahead and that America must hurry up. He has 
been told that we are sending four thousand men 
a day since Baker was in London, but that they 

28 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

have to land most of the troops in England as the 
French docks are not big enough for the large 
German ships they are using as transports. On 
the other hand, I had heard from other quarters 
that the docks in France were completed. 

The fighting has been very severe all this week. 
This morning's news that the British have lost 
Mt. Kemmel makes my heart sick. This is part 
of their best line of defense. B. said last night 
that Kemmel was lost, but had been re-taken. 

I have just telephoned a French woman in 
Paris to find out how things are and she said the 
news is not bad and that they are satisfied at the 
Ministere. I shall hope for a better communique 
from the British tomorrow. 

I wonder if my letters have given you any idea 
of the tension and strain of these weeks. Do you 
know I am almost sick over it all. Joe says I 
lose weight between each time he sees me and 
that he is worried about me. I have been so near 
it all for four years now, that I feel everything 
more than I did at first. 

I can't see how the Germans can keep on — oh, 
if only some bomb or shell could strike the Kaiser 
dead! I am sure that then the whole Prussian 
political-military party would crumble. 

Of some of the news of the army departments 
I do not write — I feel that only Charles Dickens 
could do justice to them. Do you remember the 

29 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

following in "Martin Chuzzlewit," when Martin 
asks Tapley to describe the American eagle? 
(Mind you, I most emphatically do not apply it 
to the eagle nor to the best and noblest in America 
which I love and honor, but this description might 
be applied to certain departments of the regular 
army.) 

Says Mark: "I should want to draw it like a 
bat, for its short-sightedness; like a bantam, for 
its bragging; like a peacock, for its vanity; like an 
ostrich for putting its head into the mud and 
thinking nobody sees it. . . ." 

And Martin interrupts and says: "And like the 
phoenix for its power of springing from the ashes 
of its faults and vices and soaring up anew into 
the sky ! . . . Well, Mark," concludes Martin, 
"let us hope so." 

"Enough said" — to quote another classic 
author. 

Shall hope to have more cheerful news to write 
you next mail ... of the war. I am hoping the 
Germans won't gain another yard anywhere, for 
if they are held for another month, I shall feel the 
worst is over. 

Although B. says what's to prevent their mak- 
ing another huge offensive against Paris in August. 
He says it takes them three months to prepare an 
offensive. 

Well, by August let us hope we shall be here 
30 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

in great numbers, with lots of aeroplanes and 
guns. 

I am not worried about August. . . . 

Fortoiseau, April 80, 1918. 

Fortunately for the Medical Service over here 
I heard General B. is to be given a long rest. 
Perhaps if this is true the Medical Service may 
start really preparing to organize the evacuation 
and care of our wounded. Present conditions I 
cannot write about, but they make me boil. At 
home there would be a grand howl if they knew. 

Fortoiseau, May 7, 1918. 

As to the war — I feel more cheerful. I know 
how many men we have over here now and pro- 
viding our Government carries out its program 
concerning men, guns and aeroplanes for this 
summer, I think the Allies can do something big 
before Christmas, and that by next spring peace 
will be with us in the negotiating stage. 

I tell you that if the present check continues, 
there is trouble ahead for Germany. 

Foch is getting the better of Ludendorf. The 
more I watch from day to day, the more my heart 
is filled with hope. 

The present dark spot is Russia. Supposing the 
Tzarevitch is put on the throne with the Grand 
Duke guardian. General Korniloff as the head of 

31 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

the army, is the new empire to be Germany's ally 
or ours ? Are all the pompous and idiotic speeches 
made by many in high places, and especially by 
those in Washington, to be thrown into oblivion ? 

Are they going to damn the cut-throat govern- 
ment they first applauded and cheer for the return 
of royalty? How are they going to get out of 
what they have been saying and if they do dis- 
entangle themselves from the result of their 
loquacity, how is the royal government of Great 
Britain going to take it if Tzarist Russia becomes 
Germany's ally? . . . The Irish question will 
seem like a flea bite in comparison. 

If the Allies had a unity of command for the 
diplomatic side of the war, as well as for the mili- 
tary side, our future international career would 
have less blunders than it has in the past. And I 
don't care who the diplomatic boss is as long as it 
is not Colonel House. 

Fortoiseau, May 17, 1918. 

. . . Now as to the war news. In the first 
place I think today or tomorrow the second on- 
slaught will start. The German panther is on its 
haunches ready to spring. The sun has been 
shining brilliantly for two days. There is no 
wind. 

I think it will be terrific and just as bad as the 
first one. I think the Kaiser's clique are willing 
to sacrifice any number of men to reach their 

32 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

ends. It would seem possible that the Ypres 
salient might be yielded, that Hazebrouck and 
Amiens might fail. But the price of German 
blood will be a terrific reckoning for the Kaiser to 
settle with his people. 

The Allies have defences for twenty-five miles 
back. American troops are brigaded with the 
British in the north and with the French at Mont- 
didier. They are holding the line south. There 
are several divisions in. Each division has about 
thirty thousand men. So you can make a guess 
of the total number of men we have in line. 

Pershing's offer was a practical help within 
several weeks from the date it was made. 

I am told that the Allies will try to stem this 
coming offensive and hold it, not counter-attack- 
ing before August. 

No politician can hurry General Foch. He will 
never strike until he sees his moment. That's 
how I feel about it. 

There are pessimists who see Calais taken, 
Amiens taken, the big guns near enough to Paris 
to shell the city with eight-inch shells. I feel this 
time the Germans are up against men in command 
who have learned the lesson of March 21. 

I have been talking with a man who went to 
Albert to see a British general on official business 
towards the end of March. He was motoring 
along and came to the cross-roads just outside 

33 



SOME LETTERS; 1917-1918 

the town. Huddled against the cross-roads post, 
in a heap, lay a dead British traffic soldier. My 
friend, the American officer, couldn't understand, 
for he had had no news of an advance. He went 
into Albert. Dead British, dead Germans, dead 
horses. The silence and rottenness of death 
about him. The cannon loud and near. He knew. 
So he motored on and beyond the town and then 
he met the British army retreating. He picked 
up officers and carried them where they wanted 
to get to their men. The whole evening was 
spent in listening to what he had to tell. He said: 
"Next time it will not be like that." 

Fortoiseau, May 27, 1918. 

I thought I had made it clear to you that Amer- 
ican troops have been brigaded with the British 
and French ever since Pershing made his offer to 
Foch. That has been done, and is being done, 
and every week more troops are being fed in. 
The only place where the Americans are in as a 
unit is south. The big gun started this morning 
on Paris at six a. m., and has been going ever 
since every seventeen minutes. It must be a 
new gun, no old gun could be so regular and fre- 
quent. The shells are dropping in the quarter of 
the Gare de Lyon, about the same as last time. 
This I got over the telephone just now. 

Your friend. Doctor C, turned up in Paris last 
34 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

week and came down here yesterday. He asked 
affectionately after you, looks well and was en- 
thusiastic about the Italians, with whom he is. 
They expect an offensive down there. About the 
coming one here, he said he thought the Germans 
would make a formidable attack, would probably 
take Amiens, get a little nearer Calais, but no 
more. By the time this reaches you, you will 
know if he is a true prophet or not. I think 
nobody knows anything. It's all guess work. 
Logically, the coming blow cannot be heavier 
after two months' preparation, than the first one 
was after six months' preparation. The Allies 
have had time to profit by their mistakes and to 
let General Foch organize his unity of command. 
You have no idea what a tremendous undertaking 
such a reorganization is. It's not done in a day. 
I seem to be learning every day. I devour news- 
papers from New York, London and Paris, besides 
pumping all my friends. That's the only way to 
keep in touch. I can truthfully tell you that I 
shall always be sailing the rapids of Niagara, and 
that to its last beat, my heart will be that of a 
storm-queen. A little calmer on the outside but 
the same old throb going on inside. 

Fortoiseau, May 28, 1918. 

Joe telephoned me he had seen a newspaper 
man yesterday who had just arrived from where 

35 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

W. is and who was full of optimism and enthusi- 
asm about our troops and the French. Evidently 
they expected the German attack and were ready 
for it. Yesterday the attack was made, but 
south of Montdidier. The insiders have known 
right along that there was a tremendous concen- 
tration south of Montdidier and it was rumored 
the next attack might be in the Soissons-Rheims 
sector. 

Yesterday, on his return from the front, Cle- 
menceau wouldn't be sure that this onslaught, for- 
midable as it is, is the big one. 

There is evidently an idea prevalent that Luden- 
dorff wants to get Foch to use his reserves first, 
then go at Amiens and Calais. I've been busy 
on the telephone all morning and can find no one 
worried. 

I must say, looking on my map and seeing that 
the Germans had advanced to the Aisne at one 
point and had averaged an advance of five kilo- 
meters on their front of attack, made me feel it 
was a pretty big thing. 

B. came down again last night and was quite 
pleased with himself at having told me some 
weeks ago that he thought the Germans would 
make their attack just where they did. 

Well — if everyone's guesses are wrong, perhaps 
the Germans think the Allies are too ready for 

S6 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

them from Montdidier up and that further south 
they might be able to push near Paris and get at 
that city with eight-inch shells. They'd like 
nothing better than doing to Paris what they 
have done to Rheims. 

These next three days will reveal their real 
gain. By the time this letter reaches you, I hope 
things will be as we all want them. If only our 
aeroplanes were over here ! 

The weather is changing and we have not the 
clear day of yesterday. The German prophets 
were wrong this time and I hope the rain comes 
down and soaks their roads and upsets all their 
calculations. They do everything so according to 
rule that I always feel, one thing wrong, and it 
upsets th^m considerably. 

The Italians have attacked the Austrians hard 
and this may be a very important part of the 
situation. Italian soldiers have always beaten 
Austrians. It was only German troops that gave 
them their bad time last spring. Now, that Ger- 
many is too busy on this front to help Austria, 
and the Austrians are driven back, with the pres- 
ent situation inside Austria, Germany may have 
the devil of a time. She is having real trouble 
with Austria. Bulgaria and Turkey may follow. 
Remember what I wrote you about the "House of 
Cards." 

37 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Fortoiseau, May 29, 1918. 

These days I am very anxious. Just now I got 
a telephone message from a friend in Paris giving 
me this morning's war news. 

I woke up at four this morning and until seven 
o'clock lay there seeing the battle ... I heard 
the guns booming dimly in the distance . . . and 
if the Germans push any further we shall hear 
them close by. 

From the communique I judge the French have 
checked them at Soissons, but that their continued 
advance near Rheims means that they will prob- 
ably take that city today. 

The news is better and different from what 
it was in March but just to show you: my house- 
maid in Paris telephoned me this morning — all up 
in the air: "Oh, they went twenty kilometers yes- 
terday — it's very bad" . . . etc.! I had to 
soothe her down over the telephone. In some 
ways you are lucky to be so far away as you aren't 
right up against the facts. 

I read the pamphlet yesterday afternoon which 
you sent me and found it interesting as a concise 
statement of a disastrous muddle. I followed 
Washington news closely right along. 

The London Observer had an excellent article 
about General Maurice. I hope you read it. I 
am told that Robertson and Maurice are Asquith's 
tools. Evidently Lloyd George won out. He 

38 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

and Clemenceau must stay in oflfice for the war's 
duration. There is much I could write you on 
politics over here. . . . 

I think loneliness has been the incarnation of 
temptation for our men. 

Fortoiseau, May 30, 1918. 

The news last evening and this morning is bad. 
I couldn't sleep all night and was so on the 
nerves this morning that I called up M'F. for 
news. He wasn't very cheerful, but did say he 
didn't think they could get to Paris and that 
General Foch's reserve army is not yet engaged. 
That is cheering, for it means that the Germans 
are getting a terrific fight by numerically inferior 
troops and that matters must look very different 
when General Foch's hour comes. He saved us 
at the Marne and he will save us before Com- 
piegne. 

I think in spite of the fact that the Germans 
have advanced this time, there has been no break, 
but continued sustained defense — the fighting 
must be horrible. All night I seemed to see the 
streets of Soissons with the French fighting from 
house to house . . . this morning the news came 
that Soissons was taken, that the fighting is in 
the outskirts. 

Yesterday was the third day, always the worst, 
and perhaps tomorrow's news will be better. I 
honestly feel sure that within forty-eight hours 

39 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

we shall see a change in our favor. But this ter- 
rible situation is almost more than I can bear — 
my heart aches so, and beats like a wild thing. 

Some day I am going far away to be in peace. 
But I can't bear to be anywhere but near Joe 
just now. At least here, he can sometimes get to 
see us. 

Today I got the London papers since the attack, 
and shall read what the Germans are saying. I 
wish they would print the German communiques 
in France. That would enable one to judge so 
much better of the situation. 

The rain did not come — a north wind blew the 
clouds away — confound the German luck ! 

Fortoiseau, May 31, 1918. 

Last night's communique made my heart beat 
with joy, for at last the Germans are getting resis- 
tance strong enough to check them. 

This morning they seemed to have pushed 
nearer Chateau-Thierry^ which I don't like, as 
they are after the Chalons railway. But, held on 
both wings, they have made a salient dangerous 
to themselves, unless they can widen it. A 
French friend of mine just called me up on the 
telephone to say that they had been so worried 
those first two days and that the news was so 
bad, she didn't dare telephone me, but that since 
yesterday, the situation was slightly better. She 

40 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

said the numbers of Germans were simply over- 
whelming and until America gave enough men, 
France and England will have to stand up un- 
aided against the masses freed from the Russian 
front. 

She said that yesterday, the day which is the 
feast of Corpus Christi, and the day on which the 
Pope asked England not to bomb Cologne because 
of the religious processions and celebrations, Ger- 
many's long-range gun bombed the Madeleine. 
God ! it's beyond belief . . . everyone must save 
them for they are a super race; other humans can 
be destroyed at their pleasure. 

I could see well from her talk that we shall 
have dark days ahead, for these coming months 
will bring more German blows — the next will be 
for Amiens or Calais, the Allies' part being to 
resist, to hold, to wait until we have a striking 
army ready to deal a smashing blow. 

Of course our men are coming, and where they 
are in the fight are doing nobly — everyone gives 
them praise and honor — but how can General 
Foch counter-attack against this German on- 
slaught now, and use up his trained reserves.'^ 
Some of these newspaper writers, and others, 
annoy me beyond expression with their innuen- 
does and suggestions. 

The lady who telephoned me this morning was, 
evidently, badly frightened by this situation. 

41 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Fortoiseau, Sunday, June 1, 1918. 

From the time I put down my pen in my letter 
to you Friday was a bad day for me. 

I went for a walk and met the neighboring 
farmer — all up in the air — a man had just told 
him he had received a letter from his wife from 
a village near Chateau-Thierry in secret code, 
saying the Germans were carrying all before them, 
and that they would be in Chateau-Thierry before 
her letter reached its destination. 

Then refugees were pouring into Melun full of 
terrible tales, a woman had arrived in Dammarie 
to visit relations from one of the captured villages, 
and in our village they were so frightened that the 
people were packing up, preparing to leave. 

The farmer said he was wondering whether he 
ought to get ready to go. . . . "Ruin for us if 
we do," he said. 

I tried to cheer him as best I could but I felt 
he did not believe anything I said. 

I came back to the house and had a talk with 
the telephone central at Dammarie. She had had 
a terrible day — apparently this one woman arriv- 
ing in Dammarie had caused a panic, and the 
telephone operator had been continuously be- 
sieged with frightened questions. She seemed a 
brave woman and said it was disgraceful to stir 
up people like that and that she was doing her 
best to calm them down. 

42 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Presently the cook and my maid returned from 
marketing at Melun. They had talked to the 
refugees and their tales were even worse — and the 
shop-keepers in Melun were ready to close up and 
fly and they have seen twenty military camions 
passing through Melun laden with beds, so the 
army must be flying . . . well . . . there was 
just the devil to pay in my household. 

So I called up Dr. Taylor at the hospital, who 
is in touch with all sorts of people, and told him 
all this. "Why," he said, "I never heard such 
nonsense. I was at the Ecole de Medecine this 
afternoon and saw some men from the Ser- 
vice de Sante, and they said they felt the worst 
was over."— "Then it's safe here .?"—" Why , 
surely.'" 

The strange thing was that although my reason 
said no, my heart was beating like a sledge-ham- 
mer. I was alone, with the children to decide 
for, and if any of this news were true, why what 
should I do} 

I went through an agony of panic — I knew it 
was crazy and weak, but yet I just couldn't bear 
the situation. 

On the map I saw we were not ninety kilometers 
from Chateau-Thierry. . . . 

All night the trains went by — I could recognize 
the "thug, thug" of our heavy American locomo- 
tives every five minutes through the silence of 

43 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

the night . . . the railway is about six kilometers 
from here following the Seine. 

When I heard the trains I knew the reserves 
were travelling into battle under cover of the 
night. French reserves. Oh, the sorrow to know 
that our great army is not here in this hour of 
anguish ! 

But I know the French army cannot be beaten. 

Saturday night Joe came down. He had had 
a very interesting trip — but no sleep, and on his 
return to Paris had found the hospital full of 
American and French wounded. The hospital 
was so crowded that they had the wounded every- 
where. 

The Americans were all from the battle of 
Cantigny, and all our division. So you see I was 
right that those wounded would come under Joe's 
care. 

These men were very dirty, very hungry, but 
proud to have been in a good fight and in excellent 
spirits. No panic in any of those American or 
French, and they had been through hell itself. 

Joe had been told one dreadful story — a certain 
hospital in the present battle zone had not been 
evacuated in time, the onrush of the Germans was 
so rapid just there. It was a fracture hospital 
and the patients were all in those appliances of 
Joe's — suspensions, etc. — very slow and difficult 
to move. 

An officer told Joe that when the Germans got 
44 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

there, they went through the wards and killed the 
wounded, helpless as they lay . . . the surgeons 
were shot where they stood, they drove the nurses, 
a frightened crowd, in a corner of the court-yard 
and then turned the machine guns on them and 
killed them that way. 

They seemed to have gone amuck, those Ger- 
mans, like niggers in the south. 

Joe was very calm, sure that the French would 
get the better of the Germans in this battle, is 
more worried how we are going to have beds 
enough for our wounded than anything else. 

Last night's communique was grand — this morn- 
ing's not so good. 

A French friend of mine called me up just now, 
and said she had just heard that the French have 
pushed the Germans back ten kilometers around 
Soissons. She had also inside "dope" about the 
rapidity of the German advance. General X. 
was ordered to blow up the five bridges across the 
Aisne and to make the stand on the heights 
beyond. Apparently all the plans were made by 
Foch and the reserves were on the way. But the 
bridges were not blown up and the Germans came 
across the river as they pleased with all their 
guns, munitions, etc. 

Then, with lightning rapidity, everything had 
to be changed, another plan made. It was ter- 
rific, this situation. Foch handled it as the news 
tells, for his counter-offensive was made on the 

45 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

battle-ground of his own choosing. Ludendorff 
tried to force him to give battle near the Marne, 
but he would not. That was a master mind, to 
be able to overcome such a terrible mistake, and 
in one night to move his attacking army to 
another sector. Those were the trains I heard all 
that night. 

Fortoiseau, June 4, 1918. 

The battle now raging is the biggest battle of 
the war — evidently Germany wants to brow-beat 
France into making peace at any cost to herself. 
Her onslaught has been beyond belief — that you 
can see in the communique. 

Today it looks as if the Germans were held 
within Chateau-Thierry and were doing their best 
to get Villers-Cotterets forests and Compiegne. 

My French friend called me up yesterday after- 
noon. She had seen an officer who had just come 
from la Ferte-Jouarre and he said the battle was 
going better for us today. But she also said that 
the journalists returning from the front to Paris 
on Thursday and Friday last, said that the war 
was over for the French. Now you can appre- 
ciate that it has been dangerous business. I am 
wondering if your newspapers have been telling 
you the truth. 

One fact shines out. Foch is there, and the 
French will hold, and eventually win, when we 
have a big army here. 

46 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

I doubt if there will be any counter-offensive 
until the end of the summer. I think the Ger- 
mans will attack again with their armies and un- 
touched reserves at Villers Brettoneux, and that 
they will go on the defensive. The German losses 
must be terrible, but ours must be heavy too — 
villages lost and retaken four or &ve times, hills 
and forests won at the point of the bayonet, do 
not mean fighting with losses only on one side. 
To my mind the question is: will Germany throw 
in the rest of her reserves against the French now, 
and if she does, can the French army hold.^^ I 
think it can and will, besides I doubt Germany 
does such a dangerous thing, for after all there is 
a strong army from Amiens to Ypres which may 
have to be reckoned with at any time. 

I hear the Americans are magnificent fighters 
and that two of our divisions have gone in on the 
Soissons line near Meaux. But I tell you, this is 
a terrible hour for us all. I wish this week were 
behind us and Foch the absolute master of the 
situation. The French army is covering itself 
with glory and against frightful odds. 

I hope to send you better news next week. 

Fortoiseau, June 7, 1918. 

Wednesday at noon I saw horses outside our 

gate and went down to see what this meant. . . . 

All the length of our avenue were horses, cows 

47 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

and oxen tied to the trees. The great empty barn 
which stands in the field outside the gate was full 
of old men and women and little children and 
boxes, and cases and cooking utensils and bed- 
ding and rabbits in baskets and birds in cages 
. . . little, little children and babies at their 
mother's breasts ... a mass of human misery 
and weariness huddled together on the straw. 
There were seventy all told. They had fled from 
a village our boys have since taken back. For a 
week they have travelled a long way, stopping 
where they could find some shelter on the road. 

Fortunately I had some things to help: a little 
milk for the babies, all my stock of jam and 
macaroni and the big brass mar mites on the 
kitchen fire to make them soup. ^Yhile I was 
there with them I marveled at their courage. 

Once only did I see a fierce, terrible hate flush 
the women's faces, and that was when the farmer's 
German prisoners stood and stared as they passed 
on their way from their work. I looked at the 
prisoners, and do you know the eyes of those men 
were full of fear as they saw the misery huddled 
there. I wondered if the thought flashed into 
their hearts that some day their ovm people would 
be driven across the German country like this. 
For the war in all its four long years has never 
touched German soil. 

All these days a long stream of refugees is pass- 
48 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

ing on the road at our gates, until yesterday. So 
I know the German advance must have stopped. 

One evening Joe came down and I took his 
American soldier chauffeur with me to help dis- 
triVjute the food to the refugees — "They can't see it 
at home — I didn't know — I can't bear it," he said. 

Yesterday a wave of pessimism seemed over 
everybody. A French friend called me up on 
the telephone, very depressed over Clemenceau's 
speech in the Chambre. Very depressed over the 
whole situation. The Minister and Ministry of 
Finance and the banks are supposed to have left 
Paris. No one knows when the rest of the Min- 
istries are going. They say that within a couple 
of days another and worse onslaught is coming . . . 

Then another friend, an Italian at Fontaine- 
bleau, called me up to say that she had received 
word from Paris to leave at once. 

Then I got Joe on the telephone and told him 
of this. He was hot over alarmists. Neverthe- 
less, he went and saw Slade at the Equitable for 
me and told him what I had heard. Slade told 
him to reassure me and to say that in the banking 
world, Paris was not considered in danger of being 
taken. He told Joe that the most fantastic 
rumors were going all over and that most of them 
were untrue. 

Then I began to wonder whether secret German 
agents were not working up all this panic, so as 

49 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

to undermine Clemenceau and get a change of 
government. Perhaps get those Socialists who be- 
haved so badly in the Chambre, to start trouble, 
which would mean help for the German peace. I 
tell you they are working just as hard inside Paris 
as they are outside. They are dangerous every- 
where. 

Clemenceau spoke magnificently and truthfully 
and said the worst, which was the best. Under 
his guidance the people know all the truth. God 
help us all if anything happens to him. 

Apparently the American and English officers 
are confident and so are the French officers. Joe 
has several under his care, one French officer from 
Soissons. He was told to hold out twelve hours 
and the men under him held out three days. 

Do you know that part of that poor tired 
British Fifth Army was resting at Soissons when 
the rush came, the rest of it was resting before 
Rheims. I believe those Germans knew every 
detail concerning the disposition of the Allied 
troops and struck accordingly. 

Our men saved the day at Chateau-Thierry. 
They were rushed out there in motor-lorries and 
went right into the fight. We are full up again 
at our hospital, this time with marines from 
Chateau -Thierry. Joe has been operating all 
day. Two tables going at the same time in the 
operating room. 

50 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

But it thrills me to feel our soldiers are making 
good every time. 

The news of the submarine attack on the 
American coast gave me a shock. If the Germans 
did much of that it might be very serious, for we 
have got to get our men and their equipment 
over every week. Men, men, and more men — 
for the Germans are still terribly strong. 

I've been in a miserably nervous state for the 
last ten days. Each bit of bad news gives me 
palpitations ... at night I think I hear the guns 
coming nearer and my heart beats so I feel as if 
it would burst my breast. This war is a terrible 
thing to live near year after year, and now that 
it seems almost at my doorstep, I can't bear it. 
If you saw the sad faces of those women in the 
shed and heard one of them tell how the Germans 
had used gas shells on her village, of some of the 
children who had died, how her own little girl had 
seemed better, recovering from the shock of a 
nearby explosion, so they had brought her along, 
only to watch her die on the second day of the 
journey ... if you saw and heard such things 
day after day, your heart would beat as mine 
does. 

Oh, these Germans must not keep on — our men 
must drive them far away into their own kingdom 
where they must meet their punishments. 

It would seem as if from now until July 15, 
51 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

were the critical time. After that our men, and 
perhaps our guns, will be here in sufficient strength 
to enable Foch to strike, as only he knows how. 

The days ahead seem dark, but I believe that 
Germany shall be conquered, and because of her 
terrible onslaught now, she will meet her fate 
before many months. 

Fortoiseau, June 10, 1918. 

Our troops make me proud of our country. 
They've done better and fought better than even 
the papers say. 

After the Chateau-Thierry fight the hospital 
was swamped. They have been pouring the 
wounded in and there are not nearly enough beds. 
The men are lying on the stretchers they are 
brought in on, in the halls, in the reception rooms, 
in the garage, everywhere. 

The nurses' dining-room has been changed into 
another operating room. Five tables are going all 
day and all night. Teams working on eight-hour 
shifts. Joe operating hour after hour. He did 
twelve cases in one afternoon, then went down- 
stairs to look over the men as they came off the 
ambulance and directing everything himself. Last 
night eighty cases came in at eleven o'clock and 
he was there looking to each one. 

He has been telling me of the fighting and how 
splendid the spirit of the men and officers is. He 
says they are pushing the Germans back and they 

52 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

are fighting better than any soldiers ever fought. 
You would appreciate how thrilled he is if you 
could hear him talk. It is a wonderful flame, this 
fire of patriotism, and our men are proving the 
real spirit of the United States, and just because 
they are what they are, we shall win the war. 

Joe says the French have plenty of men. Evi- 
dently the officers in the hospital are more opti- 
mistic than the newspapers and the French friends 
who telephone me. 

I wonder if it is possible that the situation of 
the last two days and today shall be the turning 
of the tide? After all, such resistance and coun- 
ter-attacking are a very different thing to what 
the Germans got at the end of the March offen- 
sive. Until now, they have been able to go right 
along, executing their plans, attacking at their 
own time and place. Now, suddenly, unexpect- 
edly, the resistance ceases to be passive and be- 
comes aggressive. What will be the result? 

The Germans succeed when all their plans go 
through on schedule time; now, this is not the 
case. 

Do you see in the papers that General B. has 
been " canned ".^^ The present head. General I., 
is an excellent man, but up against a terrible 
proposition. If you over there only knew how 
little B. has done, you would realize why we have 
been worrying so over here. Joe foresaw just 

53 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

what is happening — he is trying to do his utmost 
and when you reaHze that he has about two hun- 
dred and fifty more wounded in his hospital than 
he had beds for, you can visualize what his "ut- 
most" means. 

Oh, if only those in power had listened to him 
and followed his suggestions last October ! Some 
day there will be a terrible hour of reckoning for 
those who were blind or lazy or incompetent. 
Thank God, Joe is doing his share as he is — like a 
man and an American. 

Fortoiseau, June 11, 1918. 

So the expected blow has fallen just where it 
was expected: the obvious thing for the Germans 
to do was to endeavor to straighten the salient 
between Montdidier and Chateau-Thierry. 

Joe telephoned me just now — to tell me that by 
one o'clock this morning they had gotten their 
work in the hospital up to date — that means all 
the worst cases operated, the others being pre- 
pared and all the wounded in beds. 

Yesterday when I called the hospital, the tele- 
phone boy was slow to answer — " What's the mat- 
ter?" I asked. — "There's a man dying in the 
hall and I was trying to get extra help for the 
nurse . . ." 

I wonder if you could conceive of how they 
dumped ambulance after ambulance at the door 
of Joe's hospital — the wounded lay on stretchers 

54 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

on the sidewalk. . . . It's too late now to say 
"I told you so," but just such a situation was to 
be expected. These last few days have been the 
same at Neuilly and at the hospital in the Bois. 

Joe said he might come down late to-night to 
get some sleep and that he had lots to tell me 
about why the Germans advanced so rapidly in 
their push to the Marne. If I can, I will write it 
to you. Joe says this new attack is being terribly 
costly to the Germans, as they are up against 
Foch's good troops and our divisions. 

Joe's confirmation as Lieut. -Colonel has not yet 
come — perhaps after all he has done for the 
marines, it may be hurried. It does my heart 
good to think his hospital took those men in. 

To answer your inquiry about books — the new 
French ones on or about the war are not very 
good. Follow my example and read over Dick- 
ens. He has saved me many a time since these 
battles began. I read "David Copperfield" last 
night until early this morning. 

That Simmonds article was pretty good but I 
like the articles of correspondents at the front 
best. You and I can guess and deduce as well as 
Simmonds, perhaps better, for we aren't expert 
critics. Here is my guess against his "two years 
more": check of present attack everywhere, as, 
with all reserves in, Ludendorff's cards are on the 
table; counter-offensive in September; and when 

55 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

our planes are here in numbers, the most ungodly 
bombing of German cities and peace negotiations 
under way by January. Victory might easily 
come in the air. No civil population can endure 
daily bombing. Ask any soldier, he will admit 
that the effect of bombing by airplanes on the 
morale of resting troops, is worse than the guns 
or anything else. 

Fortoiseau, June 12, 1918. 

Joe says he has a Colonel of the Marines in the 
hospital and he is a "live wire," that they all are 
splendid men, no grumbling, no whining, brave. 

Those German devils flew their machine guns 
low, so most of the wounds are in the thighs and 
in that region of the body. They are dreadful 
wounds to take care of. Joe was deeply stirred 
over this deliberate destruction of manhood. The 
tears were in his eyes over their sufferings. Sev- 
eral deaths — but on the whole the men are doing 
remarkably well. He has about thirty surgeons 
under him. 

Joe says our men did far better than is pub- 
lished — he told me what happened between the 
Chemin des Dames and the Marne, but I can't 
write it to you. Some day I will tell you and it 
will make you all the prouder of our Marine 
Corps. He thinks the present onslaught will be 
checked, but that we have heavy fighting ahead 
right along. He says he knows we shall win. 

56 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

He told me how the English before Rheims have 
covered themselves with glory. 

The complete story of this attack is a tremen- 
dous thing. Believe me, General Foch is a great 
and wise man. 

You spoke in your letter about French servants 
— well, the cook goes up in the air over the war 
nearly every day. Some days they are all in a 
panic — ^they were last week, and there are mo- 
ments when I wish I had Chinese. You have no 
idea what housekeeping is at times. 

Fortoiseau, Thursday, June 14, 1918. 

I think you needn't worry so much, because the 
worst of this attack is over. I feel as if our 
Marines had stemmed the tide. By the way, so 
many of them were sent to Joe because they were 
the worst cases. 

Fortoiseau, Sunday, June 16, 1918. 

Sometimes it is just as well not to know how 
very bad the situation is. 

Yesterday morning my aunt, Mrs. G., called 
me up on the telephone and asked me to go over 
to see her. I went. She had been told by R. B. 
on Thursday that the danger was over and that 
it was safe to remain in this neighborhood. She 
thought on account of my children I should like 
to know. I got her talking — it seems Monday 
and Tuesday last everyone on the inside was 

57 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

seriously alarmed and that B. was arranging for 
his wife to go south and was sending all their 
valuables out of Paris. Apparently they all actu- 
ally feared the Germans would take Paris ! 

Joe and I knew, of course, that the situation 
was serious, but we believed in Foch, we believed 
in our British, French and American armies, and 
we felt the black hour must pass. German vic- 
tory would remain unwon. 

Looking soberly and with a little perspective 
at the situation, I appreciated that the worst 
effort was that March offensive, covering a longer 
line, using more troops; that the second, third and 
last Compiegne offensive were each smaller than 
the first one. Germany missed her chance when 
she did not keep on and take Amiens. 

Fortoiseau, Monday, June 17, 1918. 

The people who were here yesterday gave me a 
dose of Paris gloom over the situation which 
resulted in my spending the evening poring over 
maps and wondering whether I should take the 
children to Dinard. "Safer to get some place 
near St. Nazaire," said one of my guests, "so if 
the worst happens you can be shipped home on 
an American battleship!" This man thinks the 
Germans will take both Compiegne and Paris, 
that the next thrust will be the worst yet, that 
nobody knows the size of the French army nor 

58 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

the size of the German army, that always the 
Germans seem to be capable of producing a new 
army wherever they need it . . . 

At first I tried arguing, then subsided into a 
worried silence and finally resorted to the map. 
Joe thought I was a nuisance and I knew I was 
myself, but nevertheless the thought was pound- 
ing in my brain: are we all mad? Are the Ger- 
mans coming down upon us, sweeping all before 
them, are all the Allied armies done, shall we get 
here too late? 

I hardly slept and when early this morning the 
big anti-aircraft guns, just installed at Melun, 
began booming, I collapsed. 

I wonder if you can understand that it's not 
me, it's the whole terrible danger that I can't 
bear, with all the incident possibilities for Joe, 
the children, our lives ? To no one would I admit 
such a mood — it's all because I am too terribly 
near it continually, and have been ever since the 
beginning, without any respite. 

The noon letter brought me an optimistic let- 
ter from David G. from Tours, saying his dope 
was that Foch had been playing the clever game, 
letting Ludendorff commit himself in this attack, 
recklessly using his reserves, so that he, Foch, 
could not again be surprised anywhere. His let- 
ter was really cheering and because of the people 
I know he has seen, I rather feel like believing it. 

59 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Fortoiseau, June 18, 1918. 

From what Joe told me over the telephone, the 
general situation is not alarming. He spent the 
evening at a conference with Colonels X., Y., and 
Z. I think the "damned New York specialists" 
as General B. called them, have been horribly 
upset and worried by our Medical Corps situation 
when this rush came. Our preparation was about 
on a par with that of the French Medical Corps 
at the time of the battle of the Marne. I am 
not at liberty to write of what I know, but believe 
me, one whole year has been wasted. Evidently 
Joe felt from the way he spoke that last evening's 
conference will bear good results. I hope so. 

His war news was not depressing. The men he 
has seen and who were just sent back from differ- 
ent parts of the front say the morale of the French 
army is magnificent and that the French have 
lots of men, and besides there are thousands of 
Americans between Paris and the front. One man 
who is in diplomatic life, told me the worst that 
could happen would be that the Germans, by 
some fluke, something going wrong, as at the 
Chemin des Dames, might get within gun range 
of Paris, bringing up their big guns and then 
offering peace terms which it would be difficult 
for Clemenceau to refuse without a revolution. 
You see the radical Socialists, whose chief is 
Caillaux, even though he is in prison, are working 

60 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

with all their power to overthrow Clemenceau. 
Your papers give you no idea of this situation, 
which is very serious. 

Clemenceau, Foch, and the army are one, as 
well as the best in the government and the coun- 
try, but there are dangerous influences at work, 
and "near-good" peace offers would increase Cle- 
menceau's difficulties a hundred-fold. This situa- 
tion can only really become dangerous if the Ger- 
mans are not checked in their next attack. Every- 
body thinks they will be. I certainly hope the 
best in France will keep on top for all our sakes. 
England and America are ready to fight to a 
finish and settle this German menace for all time, 
so are Clemenceau and the French army. 

The future lies on the knees of the gods — who 
can tell it.^^ 

Joe didn't say all this; he was principally talk- 
ing about the strength of the Allies, their chances 
of success and worrying over the urgent need for 
the immediate improvement of the hospitalization 
of our wounded. 

Fortoiseau, June 22, 1918. 

H. is in the A. R. C. I lunched at his house on 
Thursday and I had a very interesting time with 
the two French journalists who were there. I sat 
between them and we talked. 

It seems the situation was as critical as I wrote 
you, but the English have sent over two hundred 

61 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

and fifty thousand more men and our troops are 
coming in tremendous numbers. 

H. told me he had his wife and child at Biar- 
ritz, that he had sent clothes, a typewriter, and 
some stationery to a safe place and had a valise 
ready packed in his room, as he did not mean to 
be made a German prisoner. He said things were 
better, that he wasn't afraid, but believed in tak- 
ing precautions. 

The French journalists said the danger is that 
the Germans may advance within gun range of 
Paris and shell the city to bits like Rheims. They 
expect two more big attacks, one towards Abbe- 
ville and another against Compiegne and Paris. 
Then they say it will be our turn, that General 
Foch has done admirably and that the situation 
had been difficult and critical after the Chemin 
des Dames disaster. They told me one General 
had been broken because of it and gave me details 
I can't write but that won't happen again. The 
L.'s are in Biarritz, so is nearly all Paris. The 
city is emptied. Only workers and the army 
remain here now. 

I think people got horribly frightened — it was 
a pity, as I honestly think that they should have 
more faith in their army. I have, for my apart- 
ment is as I left it and I have not moved anything 
from it. . . . 

D. hired a chateau near Tours for his paintings 
62 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

and his servants. He is at Biarritz with the rest 
of the American colony. 

I went to the hospital after lunch. French and 
Americans lay side by side. They didn't know 
who I was and they were all enthusiastically say- 
ing how well they were looked after. But oh, 
what wounds ! 

They may install a two thousand bed hospital 
for Americans near Melun and put Joe in charge. 
I hope so, but I fear some favorite of the "regu- 
lar" crowd will be put in. 

Fortoiseau, June 23, 1918. 

The news from Italy means much more than 
just a victory, and may be the reason why the 
Germans delayed their attack against the English 
which was due last week. They may switch off 
and try for Compiegne again, or they may launch 
a big blow at the Americans between Chateau- 
Thierry and Rheims. Undoubtedly, we may ex- 
pect another blow, a big one, and then some 
smaller ones, but if they get what they got at 
Chateau-Thierry, at Compiegne and more recently 
at Rheims, I think they will be compelled to draw 
back, intrench, and wait for the Allies' offensive. 

The length of the war, to my mind, depends on 
our military power being big enough to be used 
by the early fall. Our blow then, and victory is 
won. Germany will have played her last cards. 
All this fighting will shorten the war; no country 

63 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

can keep on doing what Germany is doing now. 
She has been at it for three months and where 
will her reserves be three months hence? 

Some of the Y. M. C. A. and A. R. C. workers 
talk too much when they get home. Don't let 
their "glooms" worry you. Not a man in the 
army feels the way they do. 

The air raiders failed to reach Paris last night 
but did quite some damage to a village about 
twenty-five miles from here, beyond Fontaine- 
bleau. 

There is a rumor that the French Grand Quar- 
tier General may be moved to Fontainebleau, but 
I don't believe it. Last week the report was 
that it was to be moved to Melun. Some people 
like to seem wiser than anybody else. I only be- 
lieve what I see and what a very few people tell me. 

The photographs of Paris published in Satur- 
day's Illustration made me smile. The people 
left in Paris are all a very earnest, serious lot. 
The city is much better off without scandal-talk- 
ing "glooms." It looks as if something was being 
at last prepared in Russia. Nobody knows where 
the Grand Duke Nicholas is. 

Joe has thought out a good scheme for our 
wounded — that's why he is going to Tours — to 
use canal boats on this wonderful French canal 
system to transport the men from the front to a 
big base hospital at Melun. He has it all worked 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

out in every detail and the French are ready to 
help him in every way. Now it's up to General I. 
to decide whether or not he will use one possible 
remedy to existing conditions. 

Fortoiseau, June 28, 1918. 

F. came down Wednesday and I had a good 
long talk with him. He has been through nerve- 
racking days and nights, but the only sign they 
have left are some gray hairs over his ears, which 
I never noticed before. 

The chateau where his General had his head- 
quarters was right near the German lines and the 
French guns were within a hundred yards of the 
house. Every night F. could see German shells 
bursting and the roar of their guns made it hard 
for him to sleep, as his room was on that side of 
the house, facing the German lines. 

Evidently the Allied air service for regulating 
the artillery is superior to the Germans, as, al- 
though the shells fell all over the place, the cha- 
teau itself was never struck. His chauffeur was 
badly wounded right in front of the house. 

The roar of the French guns was terrific. The 
house shook, doors and windows rattled, the plas- 
ter fell down — a deafening continuous noise from 
early morning around three o'clock. After a 
while F. got so used to it he could sleep. 

All day he was busy over despatches and going 
65 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

on errands and trips with French officers, some- 
times at night he would go and sit with the officer 
on duty. The telephone would ring giving the 
message that certain German troops and convoys 
were moving along certain roads, the officer would 
consult the map and then telephone the artillery 
officer to aim for a certain sector by its number. 
Then the guns would roar and death and destruc- 
tion would be poured down on the Germans as 
they marched through the night. 

F.'s description of sitting in the office with one 
of the officers watching shells drop into the court, 
all around the cow which was never hit (although 
her milk was thin after bombarding), with the 
sun shining, and summer blooming in the garden, 
was quite beautiful. The French, evidently, were 
fond of him and made him feel it. It seems one 
day when a certain General was relieved to another 
section, he sent for F. In the salon were assem- 
bled the General and his staff. The General made 
a speech to F., they all drank his health and spoke 
so beautifully to him, that even as he told it, the 
tears were in his eyes. 

Then he told how, when the bad news of the 
Chemin des Dames came, there was gloom over 
every one, from the cooks up, but in the morning 
when the word came that General Mangin was to 
counter-attack, they all became hilarious and the 
good news made them crazy. 

66 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

The oflficers and the men are one in their loyalty 
to the cause and, weary and war-tired as they are, 
they will never quit. Such is the French army. 

F. told us of the air superiority of the Allies 
and how the German communiques lie. Once, in 
two days, he saw with his own eyes eight German 
planes brought down, and the Germans gave out 
that two planes had been brought down in two 
days. He says the French and American com- 
muniques tell the truth, that he knows this, for 
he was there on the spot, and the Germans lie 
continually. He says the Allied armies equal in 
numbers very closely the German armies, and he 
feels sure the coming attack will not have the 
results of those two bad ones. He is full of 
enthusiasm for our troops and evidently thinks 
they will win out in spite of some handicaps. 
Always you must remember that there are people 
who endeavor to apply Cuban and Philippine 
experience as the gospel of how to win this war. 
I think F., like many others of those in the war 
for patriotic and disinterested motives, is slighted 
by the old guard in a perfectly unnecessary way. 
West Point will never treat Plattsburg as its 
equal, won't ask reserve officers to come to the 
mess, lets them walk up and down in the street, 
waiting until the head man can receive them. It 
is apparently difficult for the French to under- 
stand the difference, and they seem to get on bet- 

67 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

ter with one crowd than the other. The liaison 
work under H. has done a great deal of good. 

We talked war all the evening. F. told us how 
the German General who commanded against Can- 
tigny had been broken and his officers court-mar- 
tialed. F. did not expect a counter-offensive until 
enough American airplanes and heavy artillery 
are here to enable Foch not only to make an 
offensive, but to carry it through. This the Ger- 
mans have not done recently. The duration of 
their power in offensive is about six days. There 
are many rumors about their next move — some 
are frightening — but F. is firmly and calmly sure 
of the future, and he comes right from the front. 

Fortoiseau, Monday, July 1, 1918. 

The French Colonel whom I saw yesterday 
told me the French are all worried about the 
American arrangements for the care of their 
wounded. After a certain action they asked the 
Americans where they wished them to evacuate 
their wounded. To the nearest American base 
hospital, was the answer. That was over a hun- 
dred kilometers away. This situation is all along 
the line and is due to the stupidity of General B. 
who, against Joe's advice given a year ago in July 
and again in October, placed the base hospitals 
so far back in the country that the wounded can 
only be transported with difficulty and danger. 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

I know of one magnificently expensive installation 
which is on the top of a hill. ... I have been 
told they are building a railroad to it. 

The French cannot understand why the Ameri- 
can medical heads have not profited by the experi- 
ence of those who have been over here for some 
time and before America came into the war. 
The present situation means that we have de- 
pended on the French for the care of our wounded. 

I saw a French General recently. He gave a 
completely different version of what I had heard 
occurred at the Chemin des Dames. According 
to him General M. had very few men, tired men 
at that, very few guns, and the German "sur- 
prise" was pretty successful. No blame could be 
attached to either General or troops. They were 
overwhelmed and had to give way rapidly. This 
General seemed to think the next attack would 
be more likely to come near Luneville and Nancy, 
rather than against the British or against the 
Compiegne-Rheims line. In this latter place no 
surprises can now succeed, and only surprises will 
enable the Germans to gain ground again. On 
the other hand, a desperate dual onslaught against 
the Abbeville sector and the Paris one might 
give results worth their while, whereas if they 
got Luneville and Nancy it would mean nothing. 
I suggested that they would be more likely to 
attack the Americans either at Chateau-Thierry 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

to get Meaux, or in the Vosges with the idea that 
a victory against our troops would prove the 
German estimate of our army right. He did not 
see this possibihty. But I do. 

Why shouldn't Ludendorff try two attacks : one 
against Amiens and one at Chateau-Thierry, 
trusting that either one might get them near 
enough to Paris to shell it, which is what they 
evidently want to do? 

The weather here is just now a source of real 
worry, for if we don't have rain soon it will go 
hard with the potato crop. Guess what that 
might mean in the food situation, with all the 
present difficulties and restrictions. Some one 
from Paris said to me recently, no potatoes would 
mean peace at any price with the Parisians. 
Every now and then a remark like this jars me. 

This Kerensky visit and his being tolerated in 
any Allied country is beyond me. I am worried 
now as to what will be President Wilson's atti- 
tude. Certainly the disorganization of the Rus- 
sian army was due to Kerensky. He is a smooth 
and glib talker, dangerous because he evidently 
has both power and charm over his audiences. 
So has Mr. Caillaux and many other members of 
the criminal class. 

Another matter which is serious is the food 
question in the American hospitals. P. turned up 
in Paris looking terribly thin — he said the food 

70 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

where he was, was simply dreadful: "Bully-beef 
three times a day!" Our American army cooks 
leave much to be desired. On the other hand, at 
a certain very poorly run hospital, where the sur- 
gical care will mean stiff arms and legs, the food 
is as good as at the "Ritz" and costs just about 
as much to the management. At Tours the food 
is good. It seems to differ widely everywhere, 
and the cooking ranges from zero to a hundred 
per cent. 

Fortoiseau, July 5, 1918. 

Joe came down the other day full of enthusiasm 
about his hospital plans, and went with me to 
call on the General of this region to find out 
about the situation. Yesterday morning he went 
all around the country to look at possible loca- 
tions. He found three good sites between the 
river and the railroad so either could be used for 
transportation. He has to report to Colonel B. 
today and if all goes as it should, the barracks 
could be up and the hospital ready for a thousand 
wounded inside of six weeks. I hope Joe won't 
get disappointed again. . . . 

The General we saw, and the General who is 
head of the big office and school beyond Melun 
and all the local officers, held a review at Melun 
yesterday in honor of July the fourth. We had 
places reserved for us on the reviewing stand. 

The French and American flags waved, and the 
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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

bands played the "Star Spangled Banner," and 
speeches were made, and there was great cheering. 
... As our boys marched by, I thought how each 
man was the son, or the brother, or the husband 
from some home over there where he was the 
center and hope of its fireside, and my heart 
began to hurt, and my tears began to fall and all 
the time they passed, I was crying. I couldn't 
bear to think of what was ahead of those boys 
and how many would never go back. 

Of course the really beautifully expressed ap- 
preciations and gratitude of France are thrilling, 
but the Kaiser-Devil has caused more suffering, 
agony and death to more people in the world 
than has any tyrant of any age. I never see 
young men marching these days without feeling 
what most of them are marching to. 

Perhaps you felt that too, when you watched 
troops march down Fifth Avenue in New York, 
and you know the kind of agonizing heart-beat I 
mean. Oh, to kill this power of evil, this brute- 
beast of Germany, to drive this thing forever off 
the earth and out of our children's future ! 

They telephoned me the other day that there 
were some American and English soldiers at the 
hospital at Melun and that they were lonely and 
sad as no one there could speak English. So I 
went over. The Americans had been brought 
there from Chateau-Thierry and the English from 

72 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Rheims, and believe me, they gave me a warm 
reception. You see in these French military hos- 
pitals the customs and food are quite different 
from ours and the British. The French give their 
patients two meals a day, one at ten in the morn- 
ing and one at five in the afternoon. The first 
meal consists of soup, meat or fish, potatoes or 
beans, some bread and some red wine. The sec- 
ond meal consists of meat or eggs, potatoes or 
lentils, sometimes salad, bread and red wine. 
Their breakfast, which is given them very early, 
consists only of coffee and dry bread. So fruit 
and jam and tea went a long way to cheer these 
men up. In the Paris hospitals the Y. M. C. A. 
does so much in the way of extras and treats for 
our men that I feel they do not need my help. If 
Joe gets his plan through, I shall have no end of 
opportunities, as this hospital would be always 
crowded, always in need of all sorts of extras. I 
couldn't buy a single cigarette in Melun for these 
boys — none to be had. I have written asking 
General Philipps for some for the English. 

I took them over a lot of my New York papers 
and magazines and London papers and they were 
delighted. 

Fortoiseau, July 6, 1918. 

A French friend of mind came down here yes- 
terday. Evidently, from what she told me, the 
situation had been much more critical during the 

73 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

German advances to the Aisne than I appre- 
ciate and not only from the military point of 
view. 

It seems one day Albert Thomas went to see 
Clemenceau to tell him that, as the Germans 
were advancing on Paris, he wanted authoriza- 
tion to arm the munition workers "to protect and 
fight for the city." Clemenceau, controlling him- 
self before a proposition which could only cloak a 
possibility of a bloody revolution, said he wanted 
twenty-four hours to think this over and would 
Thomas call the following day for his answer. 
Then Clemenceau got busy with his cabinet, pro- 
cured their consent to arrest certain men in the 
Usines he knew were ring-leaders, and to arrange 
the immediate evacuation of the Usines from 
Paris. When Thomas returned the following day 
for his answer, Clemenceau told him he had con- 
sidered his request and that the government had 
decided it was better to evacuate the munition 
Usines than to arm their workers. Of course 
Thomas was furious, but was check-mated. So 
ended an incident which might have brought 
France into an abyss. 

I have only seen Thomas once, when he sat at 
a table next to mine in the "Ritz" restaurant and 
gorged on all the most expensive dishes. He lit- 
erally "swilled" food. That type of Socialist al- 
ways appreciates the things money buys. He is 

74 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

the leading spirit of the party trying to overthrow 
Clemenceau. 

As my friend said, the trouble here is that the 
eight hundred Deputies know too much, and that 
their mistresses know all they know. Many co- 
cottes and women in houses of ill fame are Ger- 
man secret-service agents, Germany knows what- 
ever the Deputies know. It seems that during 
this last bad time the wives and mistresses of the 
Deputies moved everything they owned out of 
Paris and that the Deputies themselves were be- 
seeching Clemenceau to transfer the government 
to Orleans. Clemenceau told them to "go to the 
devil," that he would stay and face any situation, 
and that they were "canaille." 

So the government remained and won out in 
one of the most critical situations of the war. 
This woman was interesting about the Chemin des 
Dames. She said the General under General M. 
who failed to carry out orders was a political ap- 
pointment. The center in his line gave way and 
fled. The English held before Rheims and the 
French held on the extreme left, but when the 
center crumbled, the wings had to fall back. She 
was quite abusive of England and the English, 
saying they wouldn't fight, couldn't fight, were 
demoralized, etc. That made me angry, for I 
know differently, and after these four years dur- 
ing which England has stood up and done a hun- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

dred times her share of the war, I hate Hstening 
to a French woman abusing the army and navy 
which have helped her country so much. At 
present she and her compatriots are crazy about 
the Americans, fulsome praise of the same kind I 
heard about the British when they first came 
over. 

I tell you the French army is fine and has mag- 
nificent officers and the French man and woman 
of the soil are normal, and good, but the politi- 
cians and the city people are human junk and 
make a wave of sickening mental nausea creep 
over your enthusiasm. Clemenceau and Foch are 
the symbols of the best in France and because they 
exist I know France will win out in spite of her 
terrible handicaps. . . . 

The Tammany tiger is transformed here into 
the semblance of a "Madam." A picture is in 
my mind of three figures playing the game of fate : 
a General, a farmer and a harlot; presently the 
first two win and the third falls, down, far down, 
where one sees the rotten things of dead civiliza- 
tions putrefying in the darkness of the past. Em- 
perors lie there, and kings, popes and saints, many 
peoples and customs, history has called good, 
human rubbish, which the minds and hearts of 
honest men and women have pushed down and 
away, knowing their real value. And so it shall 
be. So it always is. France, because there is so 

76 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

much that is noble and true in her spirit, must 
rise above her politics and her prostitution, stand- 
ing purified by this ordeal of fire and sword, on 
the summit of the mountain, with the stars of 
heaven shining on her head. 

I have one more thing to mention, though not 
to write about. Yesterday, something occurred 
which made me feel the United States are wise in 
their use of censorship. Sometimes by reading 
cables and letters information is obtained useful 
enough to enable the war to be won by efliciency 
in such parts of the service as have hitherto been 
mismanaged. Some day, I'll tell you of how Joe 
spent the hours of yesterday morning. . . . 

It seems the King of Spain was in Paris ten 
days ago, secretly. There are two stories for the 
reason he came: the first, that he had come to 
confer with Clemenceau about possible Austrian 
peace terms; the other to offer Spain's entry into 
the war providing Great Britain would give up 
Gibraltar. The first is possible, but the second 
story is nonsense. 

I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the next blow 
were in the Vosges with the idea of giving our 
troops a defeat, and a simultaneous blow in the 
direction of Abbeville, so as to make transporta- 
tion of reserves almost too difiicult to be accom- 
plished. Some people I have seen doubt another 
big blow anywhere. I do not. The military 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

party in Germany has to do something to keep its 
life and ruhng with the present situation in the 
Reichstag. Presently somebody in Germany with 
courage and a tongue, will realize that this war is 
not what they have believed, namely: a German 
war for Germany's sake, but that it is the fight 
of the Hohenzollern for the life of the Hohenzol- 
lern, the war for a dynasty. When enough people 
see this in Germany — then what.f^ 

Fortoiseau, July 8, 1918. 

We had a most delightful guest yesterday in 
General B. His daughter came with him and I 
got D. G. who has been ill in Paris with Spanish 
grippe and had been obliged to postpone his going 
to the front until tomorrow, to come down from 
town. 

Of course we talked war from the time the 
General got here until he left, and of course I had 
the time of my life. 

General B. is so simple, so honest, so completely 
different from the Paris atmosphere. His talk 
was like a fresh breeze from the ocean which drove 
the miasmic stench of corruption out of my 
memory. 

Apparently the anti-English talk only exists in 
certain political and social circles, for this man 
said that England had saved France at the begin- 
ning and had been saving her ever since with her 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

navy, as well as with her army, that England had 
made American intervention possible and that 
never could we all be sufficiently grateful to Eng- 
land. He sees in the future a league of those na- 
tions who have fought Prussia and a trinity of 
France, England and America at the head of it. 
He was most interesting about politics, and the 
language he used to express his opinion of the 
Malvy-Caillaux gang was most picturesque. 

Their propaganda had caused much trouble last 
year. They had used the women of the street to 
await the arrival of trains of permissionaires at 
railroad stations, seducing the men to go and 
drink with them and talk their insidious peace 
talk, mutiny, etc. The General had himself a 
case in point. 

One evening, last year, he was telephoned to 
come at once to a certain station on the road to 
Chalons, beyond here, that there was serious 
trouble, rioting of permissionaires at the station. 
First the General telephoned for troops to meet 
him at the station, but to do nothing until his 
arrival. Then he started in his car, and got there 
to find that these men had had a five minute stop 
at this station and had used it to cut the coup- 
lings of the cars, to terrorize the engineers, to loot 
two wagons of cider, sidetracked in the station, 
to pull up the ballast of the tracks and to stone 
anyone who came near them, yelling: "We want 

79 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

peace, no more fighting, no more officers, no more 
Generals !" 

By the time the General got there, the riot was 
in full swing, fourteen hundred men in it. He, 
entirely alone, without arms, only his cane. The 
station authorities begged him not to approach 
the men, nor to speak to them. But he did. 
And he gave them a great talk. "Nous voulons 
la paix," they yelled. "Eh bien, je la veux aussi 
moi et vous allez me la foutre," he answered. 

They wouldn't listen to reason, they were too 
drunk, so the General gave the signal for the 
troops he had telephoned for to go on. Then he 
turned to the rioters again: "Every man goes into 
those cars at the point of the bayonet, and any 
man who climbs out of a car is shot." A few 
threw some stones at him, but he stood there, with 
his cane, calmly. The engineer was afraid to go 
back into the engine, so the General got up into 
the engine cab beside him. Then most of the 
men saw sense, and he accordingly had their per- 
missions stamped and the train pulled out of the 
station. The General went to the telephone and 
called the officer in command at Chalons. He 
told him just what had happened, to meet the 
train, to let those men whose papers were stamped 
go on, and "to deal with the others as neces- 
sary." The General said he thought some thirty 

80 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

of them were shot. "Now," he said, "you ap- 
preciate those coquins who spread such poisonous 
talk." 

It is true, however, that this occurred last year, 
and as he said this situation no longer exists. 
Now, the morale of the army is magnificent, but 
the general staff must have "du cran" to have 
won out as it has, against the political traitors 
who were continually endeavoring to "knife" it 
in the back. 

He seems to think the coming German offensive 
is beginning, and in the region near Rheims. 
The objectives being to get Chalons and to bring 
their line down and beyond Chateau-Thierry. 
He does not think they will succeed and said he 
would not be surprised if Foch were waiting for 
this offensive to start, to get going and about the 
third day, give them "something" good and hard. 
From the way he spoke, I felt the worst hour was 
over. He used to be with Foch and is wildly 
enthusiastic about him and his great wisdom and 
true judgment. 

The General lost his only son at the beginning 
of the war. He can't speak of him without tears 
in his eyes. The boy was wounded in the head 
and took twenty-seven days to die. 

D. G. has to go as Officier de Liaison to General 
Gouraud in command of the Chalons sector, so he 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

will probably be right in the thick of the next 
fighting. D. G. said they were terribly short of 
Officiers de Liaison, just now. 

Fortoiseau, July 10, 1918. 

I enclose some articles to interest you: two on 
French politics by the man who started the Malvy- 
Caillaux row and investigation and one from the 
Matin on our medical organization here, which is 
what might be called in New York American a 
"creel." They say creeling is so very much the 
fashion these days but I can't very well believe it. 
Some "buts" might be spoken about the M. C, 
of the A. E. F. The object of this article, as well 
as the photographs in the New York Sunday 
papers of the sanitary trains and all that's being 
done for the wounded, is obvious. As a matter 
of fact, too much visiting and over-doses of ice 
cream and chocolate cake are going on in the 
Paris hospitals and such awful old "tanks" and 
"saucisses" in uniform I have never seen. The 
passport department in Washington must be an 
institution for the blind. 

Early this spring the lawyer who went to Ger- 
many to pilot Mrs. B. back to America came to 
Paris to see a certain secretary in the United 
States Embassy, who was a friend of his, to warn 
him that he and all the people he was interested in 
should leave Paris, as the Crown Prince had ad- 

82 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

vised Mrs. B. to save her friends in Paris while 
there was yet time, as he was going to take the 
city and enter it in triumph shortly after the 
offensive, to be started in March, should have 
reached its successful climax. This story went all 
over Paris, and when I was told that the United 
States secretary only shrugged his shoulders, 
other people did not, and they were badly fright- 
ened. But every one was very much surprised 
that such a personal friend of the Hohenzollern 
family as Mrs. B. apparently was, should be 
allowed to go back to America. 

General I. has declined Joe's plans which I have 
mentioned to you recently. I think they would 
rather have regular army officers in important 
positions, and as the French do not place the same 
valuation on Philippine experience that they do, 
the same thing will happen this year as happened 
last : talk and more talk, propositions and counter- 
propositions and finally the polite getting out of it 
by the French, because they do not care to deal 
with the class of surgeon who frankly admits that 
he has come to France to teach French surgeons 
how to care for their wounded. 

It discourages me dreadfully to see Joe go heart 
and soul into some plan which would help our 
men to get care quicker and better, to collect a 
whole lot of data and information, giving hours 
of his time and then to have the result of it all, a 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

pigeon-hole, with "many thanks." Later I sup- 
pose his plans and suggestions will be taken down 
from the shelf by some "regular," and carried 
through with a big hurrah and much credit. Oh, 
the amount of time wasted, the number of useless 
talks, the not getting down to doing things at 
once and ahead of time, make my heart ache, 
especially as our mistakes are creeled and we are 
not allowed to profit by them. There is some- 
thing else besides words. 

Fortoiseau, July 12, 1918. 

Your letter of June 13 came last evening. It 
seemed rather in a minor key about everything. 

One thing I want to get clear in your mind, as I 
see you are somewhat confused about it, and that 
is what is meant by "brigading" American troops 
with the French and English. Divisions are put 
in as divisions, not as regiments or battalions, so 
the unity is not broken. The Marines went in as 
a division and there is no idea of breaking them 
up. Our officers are under French advice and 
direction and in view of many things this would 
seem the best way to give our troops a chance to 
be well and carefully used. The officers who have 
been in this hell for four years are much more care- 
ful of lives and much more appreciative of what 
certain brilliant and not absolutely necessary ac- 
tions cost, than the officer fresh from the United 
States, with the vision of our hundred million 

84 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

population dulling his sense of the value of each 
individual life. I believe there are also quite a 
few differences in the way we use our artillery and 
other things, but fortunately we are in France 
and under a French boss and unity is absolutely 
necessary. It will be a long time before our men 
can be an army under its own General. It is bet- 
ter thus, the war will be sooner won. 

I am much more cheerful about the whole busi- 
ness than I was and I have hope that this next 
German attack will be handled as the last one on 
Compiegne was. 

Fortoiseau, July 13, 1918. 

Now that it's over and enough behind us for 
me to feel more secure, I can tell you that on one 
of those days Joe came here he told me the Com- 
manding General of the Paris region had sent for 
him to arrange about the evacuation of the nurses 
and women of his hospital and had told him that 
of course as commanding officer of the hospital 
he would remain on duty with those patients who 
could not be moved, when the Germans entered 
Paris. The possibilities of this situation were 
pretty bad. I nearly died of fright but I had to 
be brave and say nothing. Things looked very 
black. 

I lunched yesterday at General B.'s and there 
were other officers, both French and American 
there. Their conversation was far from pessimis- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

tic and they seemed to feel that the situation at 
present is encouraging. They were sure that the 
tide had turned and that the next German offen- 
sive would be checked. The mastery of the air 
is now conceded to the Allies on most parts of the 
front. The Gothas are being used by the Ger- 
mans to defend their munition dumps and to 
cover the moving of their troops against the Allies' 
air attacks. What will be the balance in our 
favor when the United States airplanes are here? 
There is a big fourteenth of July celebration at 
the American aviation camp near here in honor 
of the French. The officers have invited us to 
go so we shall motor over. 

Fortoiseau, July 16, 1918. 

On Sunday night at eleven o'clock we were all 
awakened by the most terrific cannonade I have 
ever heard. The big guns roared and every win- 
dow and door in the house shook and rattled. 
The worst thunderstorm I have ever heard was 
nothing compared to the noise. And we are over 
sixty kilometres from the firing line . . . just 
imagine what it must have been at close range. 
The whole sky was red. It kept up until four 
o'clock. Then we knew that the expected Ger- 
man attack had begun, and on the front from 
Chateau-Thierry to Rheims, as the sound came 
that way. We can always tell where the fighting 
is, as the different parts of the line give entirely 

86 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

different qualities of sound. The wind being 
south, against the direction of the firing, we heard 
it with terrific distinctness. When the wind is 
with the sound: north, we hardly hear the guns 
at all. This south wind is against the Germans 
as they can't use their gasses, and we can. Many 
people thought they were delaying their attack 
hoping the wind would change, as each time they 
have had the wind they wanted. Today it is 
south, we have had heavy showers and last night 
a severe thunderstorm, so this time the weather is 
not helping the Germans. There was no news to 
be had yesterday morning. I was frantic. Joe is 
away. Chamont-Langres-Tours. Another lecture 
at the college at Langres and an appointment with 
General X. to try and get his hospital plan through. 
It is now blocked by the Medical Committee of 
the army. 

A French friend of mine came down to lunch 
and brought with her a man who is in munition 
and other factories and very close to the govern- 
ment people. He was far from cheerful. He said 
the government was very anxious about this at- 
tack, that it was the biggest and hardest one yet, 
that the German "armee de choc" was one mil- 
lion, five hundred thousand men, that the French 
one, on the contrary, had been largely cut into 
for help for the English, that losses and prisoners 
had much reduced our numbers, that this attack 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

would probably be on the Compiegne front and 
that they might gain some ground. This man 
also told me that the Japanese had landed at 
Vladivostok on Thursday. 

At noon the mail brought me a letter from 
David Gray written on the 12th. He is near 
Montaigne de Rheims with General Gouraud: 
"All the news I hear is good. We are ready for 
them everywhere and for everything that may 
happen, so there is no need to be nervous about 
anything. No one seems to know what is keep- 
ing the Hun quiet, except that they are not quite 
ready. But when they are ready, they are going 
to have a hot reception. So don't be nervous." 

At two o'clock I got the communique from the 
General's office at Melun by telephone. This one 
was very different from the one the first day of 
the other attack. Compare them yourself. Then 
I got a reassuring telephone message from Paris 
that the Germans were being held everywhere, 
that only on one point had they advanced some 
two hundred yards. I felt better by that time, 
but I had had palpitations all the morning. You 
would too, after the crashing of those guns through 
the night. My nerves are still buzzy, and the 
responsibility of my small children so near the 
front is enough to make me nervous. 

This morning's communique is really good. I 
think we can all be of good heart. If we keep on 

88 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

as we have begun, it is the beginning of the end 
for the Germans, and as it is the first time they 
have attacked without carrying off a grand-stand 
success, I feel the effect is not going to be good on 
the morale of their troops. I was told that the 
attacking army is General Von Galwitz's army, 
the only one not yet used. 

It is a gigantic battle over eight kilometres long 
and it must be the supreme effort of the Germans. 
We have anxious days ahead, but we have started 
off well; for the first time, there has been no sur- 
prise. 

Fortoiseau, July 19, 1918. 

I spent the whole afternoon at the Melun hos- 
pital in the ward with our men. The hospital 
was rather swamped as they had been filled up at 
two A. M. with wounded. Seven Americans had 
been brought in with their own French. They 
waited until I got there to get their names and all 
the details of their injuries. Have you ever 
thought of what "shell shock" is? Well, it is the 
most unnerving thing to see. One of our men 
had it. Until I was able to make him understand 
me as I sat beside him, no one could get him to 
speak, or eat or drink. Wild eyes, mad, horrible. 
Another man, wounded in the head, probably 
mortally, cried like a baby when he heard my 
American voice speaking words he could under- 
stand. The others are less badly hurt, and how 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

they loved the papers, and the fruit and my visits. 
The hospital staff were all so busy that I was left 
entirely alone in the ward with these men the 
whole afternoon . . . and do you know, I was 
happy, for I was of service to my own and there 
was no one to interfere. 

You have no idea of how thrilling the account 
of those who could talk, was of the fighting at 
Chateau-Thierry in which they were. They had 
been sent to dig trenches last Sunday against the 
German attack which was expected to come on 
Monday. The Germans came on ahead of time. 
These men, who were engineers, had only one 
machine gun to defend them, and the man who 
had it ran up and down on the top of the trench 
firing all the time, so the Germans thought the 
Americans were well protected by several machine 
guns and stayed in the village, fearing to attack. 
Then the French came up to relieve our men. As 
usual, we were short of ambulances, and these 
men were picked up by a French ambulance and 
put on a French train for Melun. 

They told me the Germans were in for a thrash- 
ing. I never heard such confidence. They say 
the Germans are scared to death of the Americans 
and give themselves up, but that the German 
army has a great many big guns and machine 
guns, more than we have, and that's the reason 
they can hold at all. If what these men tell me 

90 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

is true, forty thousand Germans will be caught in 
their salient below the Marne today. 

Joe came down late last night. Very tired and 
blue. He brought me the correspondence about 
the big hospital down here which would prevent 
just the situation which brings our men to Melun. 
Colonel K. has thrown the whole thing down hard 
and there doesn't seem to be any use of trying to 
help them clear up their own mistakes. They 
like to think and act as if France were Cuba. 

Anyhow, Joe will try today to arrange for an 
ambulance to come down from Paris and bring 
these men from Melun into his own hospital. I 
left there late in the afternoon and their wounds 
had not yet been touched. The nurses told me 
the French were so much worse wounded than 
ours, that ours would have to wait their turn. 
And we have grand base hospitals with empty 
beds, far away south . . . doesn't it make you 
sad and angry? 

The news in the morning's paper is so good, 
that I can hardly believe it. We have so much 
bad news that today I just want to weep. I can't 
stand the relief. 

Joe telephoned me today. He was terribly 
excited over the news, saying word has just come 
that our first, second and third divisions had 
taken sixteen thousand prisoners yesterday, that 
they were pushing on, that it looked as if the 

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Germans were on the run. He said he had been 
told that the Americans took Soissons at four a. M. 
He was good to Hsten to. He had been ordered 
up to Compiegne this afternoon to help the evac- 
uation of the wounded from up there. 

Oh, if only we can end this war soon and end 
this hell. For hell it is for the soldiers, the people, 
all of us . . . even me. 

Fortoiseau, July 22, 1918. 

I went into Paris yesterday and spent all day 
at the hospital. I don't think it is possible for 
me to give you an idea of what that place is like. 
Everybody overworked, every ward overcrowded 
. . . most of my time was spent at the bedside 
of a young man who intermittently, through hours 
of the day, told me his story which I want to get 
to you. I think I shall write it to you in a way 
which may enable it to pass the censor. . . . 

"The other night I dozed off to sleep with the 
dull distant din of the cannon booming in my 
ears, far away, off in the direction of Chateau- 
Thierry . . . and then I woke up in a dream. 

"I seemed to be in a crowded camion, and we 
were all on the way to the front. The attack was 
to be at four a. m. What hours and hours we 
had waited for the camion, we had none of our 
own, they were to be provided by the French, 
there was some unexplained delay, and as I waited 
I felt if only we were handling our own transpor- 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

tation there would have been none of those weary 
hours. . . . 

"The roads were rough and we rattled along all 
night. Then we stopped. Eight miles to *hike,' 
so as to be on time for the attack, not one minute 
for food or rest. Tramping on into the night. 
All the time I was thinking of how it would feel 
to face the music. We had only reached France 
July 1st and did not know much about the war. 
We had been quiet at Toul. We had the word to 
start barely in time to get ready, and something 
had gone wrong about our rations. I had nothing 
to eat since a day and a night. As I tramped 
along I thought about the way I'd get a real crack 
at the Dutchies, and damned their Kaiser for 
starting all this bloody mess and messing up the 
whole world. I had been a mechanic in New 
York state, but I went into the army because I 
felt I just had to get those Dutchies. God, I was 
hungry as I tramped along. I wondered why our 
food had gone astray and would we get anything 
when we got there, before we went into the fight. 

"Then suddenly we were there, and so was the 
food outfit, but it was useless, because there was 
no time to do any cooking, we had to go right on 
and into the fight and attack. They got us some 
coffee. I drank two cups and as I had some 
candies in my pocket, I sucked some of those 
and off I went *over the top' as the British say. 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

"The noise was terrific, our guns were smashing 
above us and the Germans were going back be- 
fore us. My heart was beating, we were winning, 
on we went bhndly into the noise and smoke. 
Into the hell of it. *Duck into that dugout, shell 
coming ! ' shouted my Sergeant and I ducked. 
A blinding terrible blow on my head. 

"I staggered out of the hole crying for help, 
blood was blinding me, I couldn't see anything. 
I guess I had been there a while before I stag- 
gered out, probably knocked silly by the blow. 
It hurt so I couldn't bear the pain and I couldn't 
see a damn thing and there didn't seem to be any 
one near, the noise was farther away. Then I 
yelled for help, over and over again. But there 
was no answer. Then I heard the noise of a 
motor in the dark, for I was still blinded by the 
wound in my head, and I shouted as loud as I 
could. They heard me and stopped. I tried to 
explain, but they were all French and couldn't 
understand. But they did go and find an Ameri- 
can officer and he was good to me. He led me 
along until we got to a first aid station. They 
gave me something to drink and to eat, and said 
I had better not get any operating on the wound 
until I reached a base hospital. They washed 
and bandaged my wound and it felt better. Then 
I was started on my way back, first in the ambu- 
lance, then in the train. We got to a hospital. 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

But I guess it was sort of a makeshift place. 
There were no beds for us. We lay on stretchers 
on the ground. There must have been a lot of 
us. They were groaning all around and crying in 
pain — there were men dying. I heard them dying. 
It was hot as hell. I felt the sun burning me up. 
There were millions of flies. Somebody came and 
gave us water. We were all so thirsty it didn't 
seem as if we could ever drink enough. Presently 
I heard voices. Some officers were talking. One 
of them said there was a surgeon from Paris with 
them. That man had a kind voice. I heard him 
saying that the operating room was just a shed, 
that there was only a small basin of water for the 
surgeons to wash up in, no convenience for doing 
anything as it should be done. He seemed to 
feel very badly about what he was seeing. Then 
I heard the rumble of a cart, and somehow, blind 
as I was, I saw the wagon. It was full of dead 
men. There were legs and arms sticking out in 
every direction. They were going to bury them 
. . . how.f^ where .f^ . . . and the flies were crawl- 
ing over all of us, the living and the dead. But I 
could not see, I could only hear. It was a fearful 
mess. 

"Well, they moved me into the train. They 
said I was to go to a Paris hospital. 

"When I got there, that is here, it was all 
crowded. I lay with the others all night on my 

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stretcher on the ground floor. They were good to 
us. They bathed us and gave us cool water. In 
the morning they moved me to a bed. And I 
slept ! Oh, how I slept ! 

"The next morning somebody came and sat by 
me and fed me, just as if I were a baby. I felt 
she was sorry. She said she would write to my 
people for me. 

"Before she came I had been operated on. I 
heard the surgeons say they might have to graft 
some skin. After the operation they bandaged 
me up again. But I can't see . . . oh, when will 
I see? I kept asking the lady this, and she said 
maybe not for six weeks. And then the same 
voice I had heard up at that hospital where I had 
gone first, spoke to the lady, saying I was to be 
moved on in the morning, probably to Bordeaux 
to be sent home. 

"So I guess I am through with the Dutchies 
and it won't be long before I see the old Statue 
of Liberty again in New York harbor. 

"'Say, ma'am, I'll sure see by then.?' I said. 
*Perhaps,' she answered." 

And then, I heard the distant booming of the 
guns towards Chateau-Thierry, and I was I in my 
bed, and the perspiration was pouring down my 
forehead and horror was in my soul. And I had 
a vision of a self-satisfied, smug-faced man who 
sat at our table a year ago last July 10th or 12th, 

96 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

and listened to what my husband said and later 
when he had left us, spoke to others of "the 
trouble those damned New York specialists have 
given me ever since they came over." Will that 
man's day of reckoning ever dawn? 

Of course everywhere the line is not like that. 

I spoke to many men in the hospital yesterday, 
and they were so brave, so patient, so sure we are 
winning the war, that I know we shall. But not 
just yet. We may push them back to the Aisne 
now, or we may do much more. This battle may 
be the decisive victory of the war. No one can 
tell yet. In another couple of days we shall be 
better able to judge. If the Germans only retire 
now, and aren't licked, it will mean that we shall 
have to give them another beating in the early 
fall and that beating will be the end of them and, 
I think, of the war. I firmly believe now, the 
end is in sight. Our men have done their share. 
The Germans have got the first taste of the kind 
of hell we are going to give them. 

They know they are beaten. Wait and see the 
results of this battle in Germany and in the coun- 
tries allied with her. 

They tell me the airplane situation is improv- 
ing daily, so we may be able to give them a dose 
of their own medicine before long, and in General 
Foch we have a Commander-in-Chief who is prov- 
ing himself the superior of Ludendorff. He is 

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out-manceuvering him and outwitting him. Ger- 
mans are heavy through and through. Always 
according to rule, and once their plan is deranged 
they are not quick enough to make changes to 
meet unexpected emergencies. 

Be of good hope. Our victory is in sight. 

Fortoiseau, July 24, 1918. 

I seem to leave so many things unwritten that I 
have in my heart. I suppose it would do no good 
to write them. The war must be won and some 
things are better left unwritten. 

But I earnestly hope it will be long before our 
army is dependent on nobody but themselves for 
airplanes to chase the Germans from over their 
heads, for great guns unlimited, to keep abreast 
with our infantry, for ambulances, field hospitals 
and supplies. If we had prepared, even while we 
were neutral, many lives would have been saved. 
We must remember, that for four years, France 
and England have been fighting our war for us. 
What Wilson says we are fighting for today, was 
being fought for in 1914. We are fighting to win 
peace and a possible world, as much for ourselves, 
as for France. The United States has done much 
for France, more than we seem to realize. Money, 
which can be abused and minimized by the right- 
eous who haven't got it, is nevertheless one of 
the main sinews of war. Our gifts, our loans, our 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

materials, have been great factors. We have 
done ten thousand times more for France than 
we have done for England and England has been 
as lavishly generous to France as we have, and 
she was in the fight. She was giving her men, as 
well as her tremendous gifts in pounds and shil- 
lings. 

The one thing to do is to forget what some 
countries of Europe left undone for us in 1898, to 
close our eyes to certain conditions now, and to 
use any and every influence to get our own stuff 
in every department over here, with as little delay 
as possible, so as to make our next offensive Ger- 
many's final defeat. 

We don't want words and congratulatory tele- 
grams. We want our guns, our supplies, our am- 
bulances, our everything, and without delay. We 
were asked for men and we sent them. They 
have fought, given their youth, their blood, their 
limbs, their lives. Those at home will soon know 
what war is, for many homes will be bereaved. 
We have only just begun. 

The sooner we can do for our own, completely, 
the sooner the war will be won. Remember that 
every minute, speak the word every time the op- 
portunity comes to reach those in positions to 
get things done. 

Some day I'll tell you all the things that are 
making my heart ache . . . some day after the 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

war when you and I are far away from all this, 
then I can speak all I leave unwritten now. 

I got a very enthusiastic letter from D. G. last 
night. As you know he was in that offensive on 
General Gouraud's staff. He says this defeat is 
Germany's Waterloo. It may well be, who can 
tell what the results will be for Germany. 

Fortoiseau, July 25, 1918. 

Honestly it makes me sick to see how scared all 
our friends are to make any comment ... on 
the weather or the barometer. Even Joe says to 
me please not to write anything about this man 
or that condition, as criticism from me would be 
considered as coming from him, and he could not 
afford to make any remarks. 

To answer your questions about the Red Cross. 
The American newspapers are, apparently, con- 
tinually telling you all about their various works 
over here. I assure you that they are always 
ready to cooperate with Joe, their men trying to 
help out in times of rush and besides giving the 
patients all kinds of extra "treats" — ice cream, 
cigarettes, etc. Yesterday one of their men was 
going all around through the wards giving men 
cigarettes and lighting them for them, as they lay 
on the stretchers, either waiting for operation or 
to be put in beds, as beds became available. 

They have sent the housekeeper ice cream 
100 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

freezers, and they are going to supply the mate- 
rials to make the ice cream in the hospital, so 
that it can be given regularly and we shall not be 
dependent on outside organizations like that club 
of Beeckman's, which means well but is rather in 
the way, when the whole place is overcrowded 
and everyone is rushed to death doing the things 
which have to be done. The men care more for 
ice cream and cigarettes than they do for any 
other "treat." And as one can not buy either, 
you can see that we are grateful to the Red Cross. 
Always, as far as financing the hospital is con- 
cerned, the organization has been splendid and 
the heads, evidently, appreciate the work that 
Joe is doing. 

I read the article in Scribner's you refer to, and 
it bored me. The author had evidently been 
away from the war, and in America, for some 
time, and his theories were very old-fashioned. 
Everything changes all the time in the war. Un- 
less one is right here, one cannot keep up with it. 
This last week has transformed the whole situation. 
Our men were an unknown quantity. They went in 
and fought like heroes. They are winning the war. 

In the hospital there were French and American 
soldiers in a certain ward; I had been talking to 
them for a while, and one of the Frenchmen said 
to me: 

"Madame, you should tell your compatriots 
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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

not to fight with such completely crazy courage. 
They let themselves be massacred. I have never 
seen such madmen as they are. We know better 
how to protect ourselves." " What's he saying to 
you.^" asked an American. I translated. 

"Hum," answered my compatriot, "you tell 
that Frenchy that's just why the war has lasted 
so long, they are too careful. We are in this to 
lick the Dutchies, and to lick them good and as 
quick as we can. If we do get hurt and killed, 
those Dutchies are well scared of us, and they 
run; if they didn't have so many more machine 
guns than us, they would run a damned sight 
faster." And that is the difference. The Allied 
armies have been in this terrible war so long their 
men cannot have the punch and vim of young 
and fresh men, such as ours. You have no idea 
how much good our successes have done to the 
morale of the French. The French haven't got 
that dogged tenacity of the British, which would 
keep England fighting to her last man (I think 
his name would be the Duke of M., who has kept 
in the safe job of king's messenger right along), 
and the Americans have acted on the whole 
French nation as a tonic and a brace and this 
counts as much as victory on the battlefield. 

These last few days have been full of many 
things. A mixture of events and conversations. 
It seems that Soissons has been lost and taken 

102 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

five times since this offensive started. Now it 
will not be taken again by the French until they 
can get, not only into it, but well beyond it. 
Strategically, it is a dangerous city for our troops, 
on account of the lay of the land, and must be 
widely held in order to be held with safety. 

The situation now is good. The Allies control 
the main road from Soissons to Chateau-Thierry, 
which is either within their lines or under their 
fire. So the Germans are fighting their rear-guard 
actions with their crack troops, thus giving time 
for the rest of the army to get back, saving what 
they can, destroying the rest. 

A Frenchman told me one of the German Gen- 
erals said: 

"The French may win, but we shall leave them 
nothing in France but their eyes to weep their 
losses." 

The fires of destruction light up the skies at 
night as the German leaves his mark. The mark 
of Cain it shall be for him and his children's chil- 
dren. I saw General B. in Paris yesterday after- 
noon for a minute. I said I would never forget 
the way our men endured discomfort, delay and 
suffering without complaint. He said the condi- 
tions have been very diflSicult as the French had 
said: 

"Send us men and we will feed them, transport 
them, take care of them, give them hospital beds, 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

only, send us men T' And the General said we 
had sent men, and then all the French promises 
were hard to fulfil and the Chemin des Dames 
losses of hospitals and hospital supplies did not 
make anything easy. 

"Well," I answered, "if we were to send our 
men in with the French, coupled with them in 
alternating divisions, why could we not get ahead 
with our preparations? We have known for a 
good many months that our men were to be used 
with the French — why not have worked our sur- 
geons and all our life-saving and pain-saving par- 
aphernalia in with them ahead of time ? Care for 
our own from the field of battle to the base hospi- 
tal." And later, I have no doubt our organiza- 
tion will be perfect in every detail, and when we 
make the final big offensive, it will be a steam- 
roller-palace-car, all American affair, and the 
troubles and the worries of these days will be for- 
gotten. Believe me, to our soldiers we owe all 
the appreciation, all the honor we can give, for 
they have made good, and as heroes. 

Why, those men I saw in the hospital yesterday 
had each a story to tell, a life with the best of a 
soul. One man was blinded by gas. He had been 
in a gas attack. His mask was on right, but his 
pal's wasn't. So he took off the eye part of his 
mask (I believe the masks are difficult to see 
through) to help the other man and he got gassed. 

104 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

They may save his sight. That's what his act of 
helpfulness cost him. And they are all like that, 
loyal to the man next, even at a terrible price. 
Another side, and a curious one, is that, as 
they told me, they are grand souvenir hunters. 
Every time they get a chance to get German me- 
mentoes they do. One man had collected Ger- 
man cigarettes. . . . 

General Pershing visited the hospital two days 
ago. Joe said he was very nice with the men, 
spoke to nearly each one and told them how proud 
we all are of them. General Fevrier, who came 
over to go through the hospital with General 
Pershing, announced to Joe that the Germans had 
come to Paris, and then continued with a smile 
that there were German corpses floating down the 
Seine, which had come all the way from the 
Marne and had been fished out in Paris. Grue- 
some, this, a picture for a Dore. 

Today I went over to the Melun hospital. 
They are terribly crowded too, but no Americans 
this time. All French. They have no extras as 
our boys have and they were so grateful for the 
grapes and fruit I took them. One boy, a mere 
child, who had been operated on yesterday and 
was pretty sick, burst out crying when I handed 
him a bunch of grapes: 

"They are so good," he said, "we used to have 
them growing at home." And these boys need 

105 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

extras even more than our men . . . wounds and 
suffering are everywhere just now, it seems as if 
none of us could ever do enough. 

Fortoiseau, July 27, 1918. 

Paris was put in the war zone after the Chemin 
des Dames advance, for several reasons: should a 
further advance have occurred necessitating evac- 
uation of civilians so as to let the soldiers defend 
the city street by street, as they were prepared to 
do, the General's staff would not be hindered by 
the civil administration. The situation at that 
time was very black, furthermore, there were 
undercurrents which made the possibility of riots 
emanating from the political opponents of Cle- 
menceau, a danger only to be met by the firm 
military arm. 

Those days are behind us. For the present, 
Clemenceau is on the crest of the wave, where we 
hope for all our sakes, he will remain. But the 
Germans are not so very far from Paris yet, and 
I am sure it is better to keep the city under mili- 
tary control for some time to come. When the 
Germans shall be quite a bit farther away, and 
Malvy and his crowd either in exile or in king- 
dom come, I think Paris will go back to civil 
control. 

Joe telephoned me this morning that the medi- 
cal men he had seen were not so worried about 

106 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

some things as he was himself. I said: "Politics 
or heartlessness ? " 

That's the thing that makes me boil. Self first 
and all the time and to hell with the man who 
wants to help right what's far from right ! Joe 
takes his "cases" hard. You would think each 
one of those boys was his own. Of one thing the 
relations of the men who go to his hospital can be 
sure, they get more care than anywhere else. 
Joe goes over every case, even those he does not 
operate himself; decides on their operation, mak- 
ing long rounds every day. He carries every case 
in his head and in his heart, too. That's why he 
gets so tired. If he were a wooden surgeon, like 
some I could mention, it would be easier for him. 
Some nights he has been here, he can't sleep. He 
gets the horrors over the wounds and the opera- 
tions, worrying as to whether each man is getting 
exactly the right care and treatment. Many an 
American mother and wife can be forever grate- 
ful to him. 

Fortoiseau, July 28, 1918. 

Recent clippings from the New York papers 
brought me cheerful snapshots of old friends and 
accounts of balls and parties which I found shock- 
ing. When I think of our men fighting, suffering, 
dying on the battlefield, or as I have seen them in 
our hospital, I cannot bear to know that there are 
people in America who can want balls and par- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

ties. It seems heartless beyond belief. The war 
has not come home to those people yet . . . well, 
the ships are bearing a burden of pain and courage 
across the sea, which will bring the war home to 
all. 

And we shall have to pay much more in suffer- 
ing and men before the German is beaten. There 
has been a check, yes, but it will have to be more 
than that before the only terms we can ofiFer, are 
accepted. There are months of bloody fighting 
ahead. This is not the time for balls and parties; 
over here we cannot think of such things, they jar 
terribly. 

Fortoiseau, July 29, 1918. 

I cannot yet make up my mind as to how big 
a thing this German retirement is. We are still 
too close to it. I almost wonder if there haven't 
been two camps in the German high command; 
Hindenburg with the plan to smash through the 
British, dividing them from the French, and driv- 
ing to Calais; and the Ludendorff-Crown Prince 
plan to get Paris at any cost. The Kaiser between 
the two. 

If Hindenburg' s plan had been carried through 
and all the German forces used to push, the Crown 
Prince shut up, the situation today would have 
been very different. Now, one thing is certain: 
our army is here, our men are real soldiers and the 
very fact that they have not been in the war 

108 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

through four years is one of the main factors of 
their success. When our army shall be equipped 
in every department and altogether an army, you 
will see the absolute annihilation of the German 
forces. Even if this present retreat does not 
become the rout, which it still may at any time, 
the tide has turned, America is winning the war 
and is winning it with handicaps. 

Every day I live and hear all I do, I am prouder 
of our soldiers' courage and endurance. I only 
wish I could write you more fully. There are 
things which might be so much better if only we 
had a bigger corps of liaison officers, covering 
especially the Medical Department's relations 
with the French. More use could be made of 
their good will. I wish the powers that be in 
Washington would appoint a first-class business 
man, not a doctor, nor a dentist, as liaison officer 
for the American Medical Corps with the French 
Service de Sante to look after our interests. The 
care of our wounded is a great big part of this 
war and on certain things done now depend the 
after-war conditions of our wounded and how 
they will affect the future life of our country. 
The better immediate care of our men means 
fewer cripples in the future to weigh us down in 
many ways. I get wrought up about everything 
because I want our services to be first class. 

All day yesterday the refugees passed our gates 
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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

again, but going the other way, back to their 
homes. They didn't stop this time, they were 
going as fast as they could. And these days I 
am glad to see their beasts and their loaded 
wagons going down the road. But what shall 
they find left of their old homes? ... 

Fortoiseau, August 1, 1918. 

From what Colonel Z. told me yesterday we 
have quite a number of divisions in France ready 
to go in, and our men have fought better and bet- 
ter as time has passed. It seems they found an 
order on a German officer telling his men that he 
had two green American divisions in front of them, 
the First and Second, that they were to hammer 
them with guns day and night, to attack them 
every night, and by this they would unnerve 
them and easily beat them. It just happened to 
happen the other way. This particular division 
covered itself with glory. 

This friend of mine was terribly upset in his 
recent trip by the fact that the odor of decaying 
bodies was terrific. They can not bury them 
deep enough in the short time the men are given 
for this job. It would be better if we followed 
the German plan of having a special burial corps 
attached to each army instead of detailing part 
of our troops back to do it. 

Neither he, nor any one else I have seen, thinks 
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KATHERINE BLAKE 

the Germans will do anything big this fall and 
before they are ready to strike again, it will be 
too late. In fact, a certain French General rather 
gave me the feeling that we might be doing some- 
thing ourselves before winter. Mind you, he 
didn't say so in so many words but as I listened 
to him talk I had the feeling there is something 
under way. Evidently the Germans had indeed 
planned a real big thing. To take Chalons, get 
to Melun, compelling the French to evacuate Ver- 
dun and all that front by their advance, and to 
take Paris. They had accumulated the most re- 
markable amount of material and four hundred 
thousand men in the salient above Chateau- 
Thierry to carry it through. Foch out-generaled 
them and with very much smaller numbers has 
really given them a check of a kind which will be 
almost equal to a big defeat. Had he had more 
men we could have pinched the two Horns : before 
Soissons and Rheims and then there would have 
been a real rout, a disaster to end the war then 
and there. In any case, because of the present 
situation, we need not fear that the war will drag 
on during weary years of fighting, and blood and 
death. 

Fortoiseau, August 3, 1918. 

The war news is grand today and I am wonder- 
ing if the worst is not to happen to the Germans 
before many months. Today's news certainly 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

does not look like a long war and that means we 
will all be together before we are old. 

Fortoiseau, August 8, 1918. 

I hear that the French have brought up their 
big guns to the edge of the Vesle and that they 
are pounding the Germans between the Vesle and 
the Aisne, to pieces. It's just a question as to 
how long the Germans can stand it, before they 
get back on the Aisne. There is a feeling that 
something else is on in the near future, that now 
General Foch is a Marshal he will use his baton 
on the Germans good and hard. 

Fortoiseau, August 12, 1918. 

To answer your question as to the efficiency of 
our "top" officers. I hear our first army is now 
organized, that Pershing and his officers are in 
full command. They will undoubtedly be in ac- 
tion before long, and you will soon know just 
what their measure of excellence is, by the way 
they win their laurels and the way they save their 
men in winning them. I should not be a bit sur- 
prised if this army went into action on the Vesle 
and were given the chance of pushing the Ger- 
mans back on the Aisne and beyond, as their first 
job. 

To my mind a great deal more praise might be 
given to our men than they have received. At 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

Chateau-Thierry the Marines barred the road to 
Paris, and if they had not fought there as they 
did, with heroic courage, against frightful odds 
and under conditions which enhanced their valor 
a hundred-fold, the Germans would have gone on 
to Meaux. Where would they have stopped? 
The other day General Petain told an American 
lawyer I know, that Paris had indeed been in dire 
peril. ... "A little quarter of an hour more," 
he said. 

It's not only by their fighting that our men 
have saved France, it is by their influence and 
morale. The French have been through two bad 
defeats, of which the worst was the one at the 
Chemin des Dames, it seemed as if the Germans 
were invincible to the war weary troops; the poli- 
ticians were all scared out of their senses, so were 
the civilians, and our men came into the fight 
and made good at the psychological moment. It 
was a dark hour. No one over in America appre- 
ciated its black danger, and now that it is behind 
us I feel we can never give enough credit to those 
men. 

Today we have the great British victory to read 
about; a victory which does my heart good, for 
the English are our brothers and our race. They 
had tasted the bitterness of defeat in March and 
they have been able to prove of what stuff they 
are made. It's one thing to go in and win, when 

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an army is new and full of vigor and without the 
knowledge of defeat and retreat, and quite an- 
other thing to go in and make good as the English 
now have, with an army tempered in the fire as 
they have been, weary, tired and in some cases 
inadequately officered. However, the papers have 
been good reading, and their offensive has turned 
into what now looks like the biggest victory since 
Foch took hold. Unity of command has turned 
out Gough and put in Rawlinson, and with the 
war wisdom of the French high command, I think 
the British soldiers' fighting worth will be a big 
factor in the Allies' victory. We have men with 
the British, as well as the French, the French are 
with the British too. It is one army now. 

As to your estimation of Wilson and Hughes I 
can venture no opinion. I have met and talked 
with both men on occasions which were rather self- 
revealing incidents. I rather feel that Wilson 
understands the American public quite as well as 
the writer of the editorials in the Evening Journal 
does, and plays it, or shall I say uses it? 

Wilson is a remarkable and clever man, a 
scholar, writer, a gifted speaker and knows the 
game of politics from A to Z. Do you know, I 
think he has grown, just because the French and 
British have been so enthusiastic about him. 
There is a species that does that. It flies all the 
higher and the sunlight transforms its wings into 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

sunbeam scraps. We may, as a nation, find our 
way over the rainbow under his leadership. Rider 
Haggard would be just the writer to give a popu- 
lar picture of his reign. "He" instead of "She." 
If only I were a Thackeray baked into a Dickens, 
what a real justice I might do to Wilson. Why 
aren't babies allowed to do the conception cooking 
of their beings, to choose the latent qualities in 
the spermatozoa which is to handicap their life? 
I would have mixed a little Dickens, a bit of 
Thackeray, a scrap of Socrates, and just a dash of 
Venus. Then I might have been a genius and 
reached the stars and stayed among them, or 
perhaps, have only kept them in my heart, always. 
Instead of which my fairy godmother only gave 
me the knowledge that there is a magic kingdom 
on earth, without teaching me how to find my 
way there. 

The only real genius is finding expression. 
That's the divine spark, the Star of Bethlehem, 
the thing that makes creators. Just that was the 
quality the old Jew had who wrote the first chap- 
ter of Genesis. Why even today his words stand, 
although all knowledge proves he was a grand old 
liar. But he felt creation and he was able to 
write what he felt, or more probably, to speak it, 
and so — "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
my word shall not pass away," to quote another 
Jew. 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Watch next Wednesday's news, see if there is 
not another attack in the center and later another, 
perhaps in the Vosges. Of course, what the Ger- 
mans would like would be for the Allies to be sat- 
isfied that they have got the Germans back on 
their old lines, and doing nothing until next 
spring, when the Americans would bear the brunt 
of a big German attack, while the Germans would 
have all the winter months in which to prepare 
and get together, by hook or crook, a fresh army 
from somewhere. 

Now I don't believe this will be General Foch's 
way of winning the war. I think he will keep on 
with the present style of moderately large offen- 
sive, hitting first the Crown Prince and then Ru- 
precht until he has finished them. With their 
armies so weakened that they can be discounted, 
why should he not give another blow in the 
Vosges? The English have fought well, their 
General Rawlinson works in with General Foch, 
the creating of Foch a Marshal has made the 
"supreme command" easy for Haig, proving that 
sometimes such acts are not only tokens of well- 
deserved appreciation to a great soldier, but the 
way to smooth out questions of rank. 

If this is the course pursued, I maintain, all 
wise military experts to the contrary, that the 
end is several months closer to us than next year. 
If General Foch uses the initiative which he now 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

has and keeps on, as his armies have been doing 
these last few weeks, the Germans can't stand it, 
and they will be beaten before the snow falls. 
So, watch out on the front around Compiegne and 
between the Vesle and the Aisne. Don't expect 
that the Germans are going to have any rest. 
They are not. Foch can now carry through his 
method and I am sure, win our victory. 

Fortoiseau, August 15, 1918. 

Do you realize the results of Foch's tactics? 
Amiens free and in use as a railway center; the 
Paris-Nancy line via Chateau-Thierry opened 
yesterday .f^ These are feats of engineering. A 
French General told me yesterday that he would 
not be a bit surprised if a decision was reached 
before the winter. "They are perhaps not yet 
beaten, but they are pretty 'malade,'" he said. 

Fortoiseau, August 18, 1918. 

Last night I heard the thunder of the guns. I 
am wondering what the news will be in this eve- 
ning's paper. I wonder if the attack was not 
below Rheims towards Toule and if the American 
army is in action. Many troop trains passed 
through Melun yesterday. I know that a certain 
French attacking army has been transferred in a 
southern direction. I had heard of the plans for 
last week, which didn't come off, and I am won- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

dering what is under way now; something, cer- 
tainly. It is in the air. I have got a war sense 
now which is as sensitive as a film. I am so tired 
that I cannot write. I feel the guns . . . and 
the battle is before me, although I know we are 
attacking and that it is the only way to win, yet 
the battlefields are before me, a great expanse of 
horror. I know what the days of the coming 
week will be for us in the hospital if those guns 
in the night really meant an attack. There have 
been Gotha "alertes" for three nights at Melun 
but the Germans didn't get to Paris. After that 
last heavy fighting from the end of June to the 
beginning of July, two thousand wounded passed 
through Joe's hospital and it has a capacity of 
four hundred and fifty beds ! 

Fortoiseau, August 21, 1918. 

I saw several people in Paris yesterday and I 
gathered that the German losses are very serious 
for them, as they have lost most of their shock 
troops, the troops they keep behind the lines in 
rest camps, when they are not fighting, and who 
are given extra and better food, than the rest of 
the army. It is, therefore, a real defeat for the 
Germans and they cannot launch another big 
attack before the spring. The reason they are 
able to put up such a resistance to the Allies is, 
that they had accumulated a tremendous amount 

118 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

of supplies of all kinds for their advance opera- 
tions and have a great number of guns, especially 
machine guns. Furthermore, their remaining A 1 
troops are opposite the Americans in the Toule 
section as the Germans are expecting an attack 
there. Incidentally, the attack I expected to 
come off last Wednesday, was pulled off yesterday 
very successfully. The news is very cheering, 
but if the United States insists on going to Vienna 
or Berlin, it will be a long walk. 

I hear rumors that the Germans and Austrians 
are going to make a big attack on Italy this fall 
so as to get some sort of a victory before the win- 
ter, and I was told, if they do they are going to 
get a beating. General Wood wrote to a friend 
of mine — "I have been sent to California because 
I spoke the truth too much about the conditions 
of our men in France when I returned, but I hope 
to get back to France and to do more talking." 
Will it do any good? 

It seems that where the Americans are with the 
British, from officer to private, they are treated 
like brothers, that the feeling is good and that 
our men are getting away from that old time 
prejudice against the British. I am afraid you 
will be thinking me an anglo-maniac, but only 
those of us who have been over here right along, 
can do justice to the noble courage of the British, 
and at present they need all the good-will we can 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

give them, as the French are still sore about the 
defeat of the fifth army. 

In these days one must grow. Life is a great 
and terrible opportunity. No one can ignore it, 
for it knocks at every door. 

Fortoiseau, August 23, 1918, 

I had a very interesting afternoon with a 
Colonel, Joe brought down. He is a good talker. 
He told us of an incident which occurred last 
week: one of the German prisoners was an Ameri- 
can citizen, born in Wisconsin of German parents 
but with his wife and children in America. He 
was taken to a hospital and put in a ward with 
some Americans. At first all was quiet. Then 
he said: "I don't want to hurt you boys' feelings, 
but Germany is going to win this war!" . . . 
"The hell she is !" came a chorus. "I tell you she 
is, and if you had seen what I have seen in Ger- 
many you would all know it and" . . . well, 
every soldier in the ward that could move from 
his bed, moved, and they fell on him. The 
Colonel said there never was such a mess, and the 
German-American was moved to the Val-de- 
Grace. 

Then he told us how, at the station in Paris 
when they were unloading a train, and loading 
the ambulances, there was one ambulance in 
which there was only one wounded, a Marine, so 

120 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

they said, "We'll put these German wounded in 
there." "If you do," says the Marme, "you'll 
only put them in, you'll never take them out 
again." 

He told us how the German machine-gunners 
are left behind in nests which they cannot escape 
from, that they fire to their last round, and then 
come out with their arms up, dropping to the 
ground and kissing the feet of the Americans and 
begging for their lives. But the Americans don't 
believe in taking prisoners. They have had their 
experience. Those men in the nests are generally 
knifed. On the other hand, when they do take 
prisoners in a fair fight, they treat them decently. 
But they do make them work, much more than 
the British or French do. The Colonel said the 
worst thing in this retreat was that the Germans 
fled without ever burying their dead. "You've 
got to use a gas mask up there, " he said. I asked 
the Colonel how long he thought it would last 
and he said next year would see the end of it. 
He gave me quite a few facts and figures concern- 
ing the planes and guns, which if true, proves we 
are doing more than is known. We took a great 
deal more booty in Gothas and other supplies 
than was published. The airdrome we took was 
full of machines, with all their supplies and men. 
Our advance was so rapid that the Germans could 
not even get into the planes to fly them. He said 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

a Frenchman told him that the whole spirit of 
the French army was transformed by our men, 
that the Germans and French had got to the 
stage of sitting opposite to each other in the 
trenches, just making faces at each other, then 
the Americans came along, and disturbed the 
"Entente Cordiale." 

I wish I could write all he told me. Much of it 
was of a nature not to be written now, only it was 
all good. Believe me, this Colonel is one of the 
few regular army medical men whom we have 
met who really knows his job, is crazy to make 
good and does not think he knows more than any 
one else. Many of them are discouraging to one's 
patriotism, jarring on one's heart as to attitude, 
disturbing to one's brain as to limitations, and 
distressing to one's ears as to English and voice. 

The Roosevelts came down last evening. He 
has that same quality his father has of making 
the things he talks about "alive." 

I asked him my usual question: "How long?" 
and he said he had recently had a "hunch" that 
the war isn't going to last much longer, but that 
he had no logical reason for his feeling. We com- 
pared notes and we both had the same war in- 
stinct, or rather, war-sensitiveness. He said the 
German line seemed to be mushy, and that the 
German machine was certainly going less smoothly. 
It was beginning to crack, but it wasn't cracked 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

yet, and no one could tell how long it would take 
to get the Germans to the point of accepting the 
only possible terms, and the settling of the Rus- 
sian question with the others. I said all ques- 
tions would have to be settled on this front, that 
only here could the war be won, and he agreed 
with me. 

Fortoiseau, August 30, 1918. 

Yesterday in Paris I saw a mutual friend of 
ours. He was much less pessimistic and actually 
said he thought the war would be over by next 
summer. But he thinks the Germans are retreat- 
ing because they are moving their best remaining 
troops before Metz, as they fear an American 
attack. The way the whole plan of this supposed 
attack is being discussed, is disgraceful, besides 
being very dangerous. I do not know how much 
is true and how much is untrue, but nothing 
should be known about any attack and if we are 
to make a success of our first big thing, orders 
ought to be issued to compel discretion. I am 
sure these green officers go playing around with 
the ladies and telling all they know, and then 
some. I fear any attack near the region where 
gossip has it coming, would cost us one hundred 
thousand men at least. All our men cannot keep 
up on the wonderful heights reached by the 
Marines and certain other divisions. An attack 
is a terrible test to untried soldiers. I'd rather 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

see the other Allies doing most of this fighting 
with the Americans as helpers. Let us strike our 
big blow in March. 

Fortoiseau, September 4, 1918. 

Joe brought down President Schurman of Cor- 
nell to spend last night. He was most interesting, 
as he had been in London and had seen many of 
the important men there. Among others, Hal- 
dane, whom he had known for years. He spoke 
of the real man, of his intelligence, of his dreamer- 
like ways and how he would read Hegel at spare 
moments when he was on his committees. He 
told of how Lloyd George went to see him 
"quietly" to talk over things with him. He gave 
me another point of view about Haldane and 
made me feel that he was being made a scape- 
goat, and that we must not judge people by what 
we read in the press. President Schurman told 
us of General Smuts, and Balfour, and in fact, of 
all the big men. He seemed to think that the 
wave of optimism was running too high, and that 
the war could not be over before the beginning of 
1919 at the earliest. He had been interested to 
notice the power of the labor party in England 
and how it seemed for all the leaders, Lloyd 
George, Clemenceau, and even Foch to appeal 
to labor not to strike. Surely, it must be a dan- 
gerous force if it has to be "appealed" to by the 
heads of the army, and the state. 

124 



XATHERINE BLAKE 

It seems that an order has gone out that no 
New York papers or foreign papers, with reference 
to the Hughes airplane report, are to be allowed 
into England or France, and that any letter refer- 
ring to this report is to be censored. This ex- 
plains the three postal cards which go by this 
mail. If you cannot get the clippings I want to 
me, keep them in duplicate, as I must have them 
some day. Some day later, when nobody cares 
any more. 

The news this morning is grand. It shows 
what the British soldier can do when he has first 
class officers, as he now seems to have. Recent 
changes have brought up new men, as you can 
see by the newspapers. 

If we carry through our attack with the same 
success as the British, the end is in sight. From 
creaking, the German machine will crack apart. 
I look for the news tonight and the morning as 
crucial. Especially Mangin's army's approach to 
Pinon. If only they go five miles further, the 
whole Vesle line retires. 

I can see Foch sitting at his desk at headquar- 
ters, watching the reports, counting the numbers 
and divisions the Germans have in, and when the 
moment comes, and he feels it is the hour, launch- 
ing another offensive further south, and then 
Foch will give the first American army the chance 
to win the final battle of the war. 

125 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

The next ten days may see great things. We 
are all on edge watching and waiting. Labor 
Day was rumored as the day of the attack. 

Major H. told me yesterday that they were 
cock-sure at Chaumont. He referred to one man 
in particular to whom he had remarked that he 
thought it better to postpone his visit to a certain 
hospital because "if this attack starts it will of 
course be evacuated on account of the shelling 
and raids, so there is little chance of my seeing 
anything in the surgical line." 

"The only chance is," the officer answered, 
"that, that hospital will have been left so far 
behind the lines, before you get there, that it will 
be too far for patients to be sent to it." At Chau- 
mont they seem to think that taking Metz is just 
a snap and then on to Berlin. 

Well, I am sorry to say, there is still quite 
something left of the German army, and there 
are such things as defenses on the Rhine, and it is 
not going to be a tango party getting across that 
river and into Germany. 

Of course, I know there are men who think the 
French are holding the road to Paris, the British 
the road to Calais and that the Americans are on 
the road to Berlin . . . but "It's a long, long 
way to Tipperary" and we have only just begun. 
The fight may be short, but it is Germany's fight 
for existence, at any rate for a dynasty, and it 

126 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

will be a desperate, bloody battle and it will take 
all our valor and all the intelligence of our offi- 
cers, high or low, to win the victory. 

We will have to be more careful and talk less 
and not be so cocky if we want to bring this grim 
war to its end quickly and without terrible losses 
in men. 

Fortoiseau, September 8, 1918. 

H. G. is here over Sunday. He told me of an 
extraordinary experience he had had since I last 
saw him. He was down in the Toul sector on his 
Y. M. C. A. business, and came across a man who 
was driving a camion to a certain place in the line 
— he had supplies, etc., to go to the men in the 
trenches. This man was a real estate agent from 
some little place in the south. He had had no 
experience of any kind, had just arrived in France, 
had been driving the camion for a few days only, 
knew nothing of the roads, nor the way to his 
destination, had never had his gas mask on . . . 
well, G. felt it was not a fair deal, that he knew 
the road, etc., so he volunteered to ride with the 
man and to help him. They started. It was a 
wild ride. The Boche was shelling the road, 
they were just not hit over and over again. They 
met ambulances full of men who had been gassed. 
With great difficulty they found their way and 
got the supplies to the men in the trenches. Any 
one who thinks it is a "cinch" to be a Y. M. C. A. 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

man makes a mistake. They all take dreadful 
chances. G. told me that they are very careful 
about religious propaganda in their organization. 
They leave that sort of work to the Knights of 
Columbus. By the way, they are doing a lot of 
proselytizing. Some of the army have spoken 
about it. I think they had better watch that 
organization. They say here that Germany is 
going to launch a fierce peace offensive, and that 
the Pope is to help. Believe me, the Knights of 
Columbus might help the Kaiser quite some if 
they had a mind to, as they have many oppor- 
tunities and I wouldn't trust the Irish element in 
that organization around the corner. They hate 
the English and wouldn't stop at anything. 

Joe told me that General I. told him the hospi- 
tals at the front were splendid, excellent, "too 
good." So as long as the chief is satisfied, every- 
thing must be the best possible. . . . We have a 
lot of self-satisfied junk in France and not only 
in the Medical Corps either. 

Now as to the Red Cross. I was appealed to 
by some refugees who asked how they could get 
help from this organization. As H. is at present 
one of the Paris bosses, I sent him the request. 
Enclosed is his reply. What do you think of that ? 
Now I have written him asking him to tell me what 
formalities it is necessary for these unfortunate 
people to go through before they can get help. 

128 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

This is not my idea of charity, but then I don't 
think the American Red Cross ought to help 
refugees in the first place. I think they ought to 
spend the American dollars for our soldiers over 
here and for the families of the soldiers in need 
at home. However, as long as the Red Cross is 
doing this refugee work, I would like to know 
whether this "red tape" is due to the salaried 
workers, and if so, I wonder if that's the way con- 
tributors at home want their money given . . . 
do you remember the money-changers in the 
temple ? 

The war news is wonderful. Day by day they 
are pushing the Germans back, and it looks as if 
the line would be on the Meuse by November. 
No one can tell anything until the American blow 
is struck. For that we are all waiting. 

Fortoiseau, September 10, 1918. 

Colonel Z. came down on Sunday. One of our 
really clever men in the medical corps. He said 
that enough important people had spoken the 
truth about conditions of hospitalization and 
transportation of wounded for us to see a radical 
improvement before long. One of the things he 
was very hot about was, that until recently our 
divisions had no labor corps for the burial of their 
d<iad. A detachment was sent back to bury the 
men they had been fighting beside the day before. 

129 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Nothing was worse for the morale of the troops 
than that. It brought home in the most gruesome 
way the horrors of fighting. He said that now, 
in the division where he is, they have at last got a 
labor battalion for this work. 

His descriptions of the conditions 'on the battle- 
fields and villages after the Germans had retreated, 
was horrible. The Germans seem to have grown 
filthier as the war has progressed. He saw one of 
their large w. c.'s (only of course they were not 
really w. c.'s but just places used for that pur- 
pose), which was made from the columns of 
ancient beds, and hung with brocaded curtains 
and even altar embroideries. Evidently, the Ger- 
mans had thought out the most insulting way in 
which they could use things most sacred to the 
French. In one church, used as a hospital, the 
holy water fonts were used as urinals. There's 
filth for you of a kind to make you appreciate 
the beast the German is. My friend saw such 
acts of low and obscene debauchery that I cannot 
write about it. 

He says that now the battlefields are cleaned 
up, but the delay, unavoidable, because other 
things had to be done first, had caused millions of 
flies to breed. They had brought dysentery to 
the troops. They have had many losses from 
this. The flies are the scourge of the battlefield, 
and not by any means the least of its dangers. 

130 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

The Red Cross has done much to help out this 
hospital situation. They were able to give the 
surgical supplies which were lacking everywhere, 
and other real aid. Just because of their useful- 
ness in this direction I feel it would be better for 
the Red Cross to confine itself to the care of the 
wounded and disentangle itself from all the out- 
side issues it has gotten itself into. 

I sent for the Atlantic Monthly and read the 
articles. I rather side with Repington. The war 
must be won on this front. Keep on the defen- 
sive elsewhere, but concentrate offensive here. 
Fight here, win here. 

We can't afford big forces in the other places 
and "small packages" are a loss. We never until 
now have had as many men as the Germans, and 
even now there is always a menace that the Ger- 
mans may get an enormous mercenary army from 
Russia and prolong the war. I am convinced 
that providing Ludendorff can hold the Hinden- 
burg line now, by the spring he will have another 
army from Russia to meet us, thus prolonging the 
war a year. 

This week is, in my mind, the crucial point of 
the whole war. If the Germans are compelled, 
either by the taking of Cambrai and Laon by the 
French, or by a big American attack, to fall back 
from their present line to the Meuse, I think we 
shall fight them to such a near-victory before 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Christmas, that the final blow will be in March 
and peace negotiations will be on for the summer. 
If, on the other hand, the Germans stay where 
they now are, we shall have to start the whole 
thing over again in March and make another for- 
midable effort then. With the probable asset of 
Russian-bought soldiers, we may have rough going. 

The French have been doing a lot of stiff fight- 
ing since the 18th of July. Their cards are on 
the table. Voila ! May we move those beasts 
out of the quarries and subterranean trenches now 
and win. I am almost sure we shall, but I am 
afraid to let myself get too cheerful about the sit- 
uation, for they have certainly prevented their 
defeat from being a rout. I wish we had had the 
men to do more. With French help I think our 
men are the greatest fighters in the world. I tell 
you the French army men are the best in France, 
and because of them we can close our eyes to the 
* ' gutter-politicians . ' ' 

Rumors are rife of our attack. If only that 
"Lieber Alter Gott" would drop the Germans for 
good and all, and give us the good weather and 
the good winds and all the help he has lavished 
on them, I think the actual fighting will be over 
before the new year . . . incidentally, I think 
Italy will be the most trouble when the peace 
conference comes. She will want more and be 
willing to concede less than any of the other 

132 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Allies. You wait and see. They are great on 
rhetoric. Fancy taking all that risk and using 
all that gasoline for D'Annunzio to drop words on 
Vienna . . . note, that was a truly Italian per- 
formance. There is no use wasting words on 
Germans or Austrians. 

I am wondering why Baker is here.^^ Gorgas.f* 
Do you suppose that at last somebody in Wash- 
ington wants to know about things and conditions 
over here as they really are.^^ 

I hate that damned self-satisfied smugness we 
run up against among our compatriots. That's 
not the quality needed to beat the Germans. 

Today's weather is good for the Germans. It 
makes me sick to watch the rain pouring down. 
See how little the armies did yesterday. How 
can they do anything in thjs downpour .^^ But 
the communiques speak of artillery duels in the 
Vosges, of Hindenburg being at Metz. Is our 
army waiting to strike.^ 

Oh ! What bad luck this weather is ! The wind 
is howling and there is no sign of clearing. It 
means the slowing up of the Allies' progress. 
The Germans will have the respite in which to 
entrench themselves on that Hindenburg line. 

Fortoiseau, September 14, 1918. 

The news is good, our men are continuing to 
keep on as they commenced. As time passes, the 

133 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

tremendous importance of the stand of the Ma- 
rines at Chateau-Thierry is appreciated. They 
saved Paris, they have turned the tide, may 
France never forget what she owes them. 

They are all saying here that this is a limited 
offensive only to take St. Mihiel, but if it goes on, 
as it has begun, we shall see our men in Metz, 
giving the Germans a taste of their own mode of 
warfare. Our guns were within range of Metz 
yesterday, that I know, and I am just on edge 
thinking of tomorrow's news. Joe tells me that 
this time we are transporting and caring for our 
own wounded. This is very reassuring and means 
that our wounded will be well looked after. The 
frost of the last two nights has surely done for the 
fly pest. 

D. G. spent last night here. He has been right 
on the edge of many battles and as I think of the 
other things he told us I see especially that night 
of the 14th of July, when he met an oflficer as he 
was on his way to bed: "It's for fighting in two 
hours," he said. Some of the men with David 
doubted, they have been warned before. But 
this time David didn't doubt. He believed, and 
did not turn in, but went back to his office. And 
in two hours a great roar rent the heavens, like 
the roar of Niagara Falls. General Gouraud 
came out of his office across the hall, with his 
staff. All was pitchy dark as the lights had been 

134 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

ordered out everywhere at the first alarm. By 
the light of their little electric torches, they went 
down the stairs together to the bomb proof cellar, 
the General talking in his strange deep voice. 
David said always he would remember the sound 
of that voice, with the roar of hell around them 
outside. They all went down into the dugout, 
fifteen feet below the ground, and the telephone 
began to ring and the General took up one of the 
receivers and so the General was running his end 
of the war on the telephone right before David's 
eyes. 

Then there is another picture of a wild ride 
through a ravine, David bearing despatches, the 
"seventy-fives" on the edge above, firing across, 
trees falling down before the motor, the sense of 
being in a mighty wind, of being in a whirlpool of 
air, and the giant shells bursting, driving the 
earth up like a liquid thing. ... At last he 
reached the other end, and at the other end were 
the trenches. David reached there just as the 
men were starting for the attack. They went out 
into the open. The Germans had the range 
"long" so the shells burst behind them. On they 
went, over the open ground, one man dropped, a 
man next to him stopped and picked him up, a 
limp thing. Then the Germans got the range, 
and the guns' blinding burst of flame and smoke 
seemed to smother the advancing troops, but on 

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they went into what was the burning fires of hell, 
through them, and up the hill beyond for two 
kilometres. Those men had taken "their objec- 
tives" as the communiques read. The price paid 
was ghastly. 

When David got back that night to the chateau 
where the General was stationed, he said he was 
tired like an old, old man. The horror and the 
wonderful exhilarating thrill of admiration for 
those heroes he had seen going to their death, was 
in his soul forever. That's what these things do 
to us over here. We keep them alive in our 
hearts and we cannot believe that there is a world 
over there, across the ocean, where there is any 
human being, who can dance and have parties. 
I see red when I think of some of those people. 
And now their own, their nearest and dearest are 
in this Kaiser-made mess, and it is coming home 
to us in writing of blood. 

Then David told of the German prisoners. It 
seems he saw a lot of eighty-five men who had 
evidently gone away without their officer, had 
packed all their belongings, stacked their guns 
and weapons, and their spokesman came out with 
his hands up. . . . Another lot of forty -five 
came over and surrendered saying their officer 
was at a conference, so that they had come over 
where they thought they were better off. Another 
lot gave themselves up because they said they 

136 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

could not fight Americans. Many of these men 
spoke EngHsh, several had been in America and 
some still had mothers and wives over there. 

It seems the Germans have a lot of troops like 
this and really few of their first class troops left, 
but still there are some who will fight to the last 
man, and they have a great quantity of guns and 
munitions. David sees the end in the early 
spring, but with the possibility of a crack at any 
time in the army, and a rout with the immediate 
solution. 

My young cousin, G. R. F., who is staying with 
us, has had thrilling experiences. He was in the 
ambulance corps with Mangin's army. He was 
in the things that D. was on the edge of. You 
have no conception of what these ambulance 
drivers go through and it takes all the courage of 
a boy's heart and soul to drive under that terrible 
shelling, through the noise and the dark, over and 
into the shell holes in the roads, keeping awake 
by bumping their heads against the back of their 
driver's seat. 

He has given me a good deal of information of 
a very different kind than what I have had from 
oflficers. The angle is interesting. 

Fortoiseau, September 17, 1918. 

The Germans still seem to be pursuing their 
tactics towards getting peace their own way. I 

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heard yesterday in Paris that the Germans mean 
to bomb the city every night now, with incendiary 
bombs, until the AlKes shall accept the Austrian 
note. A Teutonic method not likely to succeed. 

I also heard that the Allies had flown over 
Metz the other day, dropping papers to say that 
they were coming on a certain day to bomb the 
place, and advising the Germans to evacuate their 
women and children in time. We are not Ger- 
mans, and we do not do our bombing their way. 
If they think that bombing is such a good way to 
get us to give in, why it is up to us to treat them 
to a dose of their own idea. 

Wild rumors are afloat about the American 
front and I do wish the news of Paris were not so 
delayed. One story had it that the Americans 
were in Conflans yesterday, another that the 
Germans had evacuated St. Mihiel and the whole 
adjacent region before our troops reached there, 
but there wasn't much of a fight. "How about 
our prisoners?" said I. "Oh, there was only a 
small number." I heard a great deal of this kind 
of talk which made me rather hot. It is not fair. 
The story was started by a French aviator. 

If only we published more of what our troops 
are doing and sooner, it would be better. I was 
told the delay in our communiques was that the 
news had to go to Washington before it came out 
here. 

138 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Now it would seem as if the present attack is 
over. I had great hopes of a real decision: Metz 
taken, the German towns treated as French towns 
have been treated and a big war victory soon. 
Of course, tomorrow's news may cheer me up. 
Today I am down. 

Fortoiseau, September 19, 1918. 

Last night Joe brought down a very interesting 
man. Colonel Z., who is in the transportation and 
ambulance service. A "live wire." If he had all 
the say, no wounded would be transported by 
mules. One round trip a day. 

Colonel Z. wants to pool all the ambulances 
and use them just as they do the army, as a unit, 
to be sent to the French or the British or the 
Americans as the case of need demands. He was 
very interesting, with many stories to tell. One 
was about a nigger who was lost in "no man's 
land" at night, and was trying to get back. In 
the dark, suddenly, he felt a live man against him. 
He said "halloo " but the man answered in German. 
Each man knew that if either yelled, or used a gun, 
both sides would open fire on them. So they put 
down their tools of war and settled down to a 
regular tussle. At the end of an hour the Ger- 
man put up his hands and cried "Kamerad." 
"Say, mister," says the nigger, "I've been trying 
to think of that word foh an hour." Colonel Z. 
told us that when they take an American officer 

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prisoner, they are apt to play the following game. 
They treat him with every consideration, saying 
that they are going to put him in with an English 
officer and hope he won't mind. The American 
finds his companion to be a most attractive and 
intelligent man, who makes friends with him and 
they both damn the Boche together. 

Presently, after the American has told a cer- 
tain amount of what he should have kept to him- 
self, he is removed to a real jail and the "English 
officer" proves to be a clever German spy. He 
says the. Germans are up to all sorts of tricks to 
get information out of the Americans, because 
neither the officers nor the men will talk. That 
gets the Germans wild. So they use all their 
ingenuity to think up ways to secure information. 
He told of one dramatic incident in the recent 
advance. Some American engineers were install- 
ing a telephone system in a house in a conquered 
village. While they were at work the Germans 
counter-attacked and took the town. The Amer- 
icans suddenly realized they were surrounded. 
One of them crept out of his wires, etc., and got a 
connection somewhere near outside, and, practi- 
cally under the nose of the German, signalled his 
C. O. The Americans came back in a counter- 
thrust, thanks to his information, took the village 
and liberated the engineer corps. Pretty smart. 

We sat up talking late and I enjoyed hearing 
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KATHERINE BLAKE 

all he had to tell. The Germans are licked, and 
what our troops do, or do not just now, entirely 
depends on Marshal Foch. Evidently his plan 
is a grand one. We are to wait and see. 

This morning's news of the renewed British 
attack shows he is a genius at keeping the Ger- 
man reserves on the move. Most of them had 
been moved down to Metz recently as they were 
expecting a continuation of the American ad- 
vance. 

Fortoiseau, September 22, 1918. 

I have been getting different points of view 
about lots of things from my young cousin who is 
staying here. He has made me feel that I have 
been seeing the war from the top, that to me the 
army has been a great far-away mass. Through 
him I am seeing the other side — the side that has 
lots of hardships to put up with, that eats bread 
and hardtack and nothing else for a week at a 
time, that sleeps under the stars and the sun and 
the rain, the side that, in an advance, goes with- 
out anything. How can barracks, when there are 
such things, keep up with the war of movement? 
These troops are advancing over a country which 
is no longer a country, the Germans have turned 
it into a desert, leaving decayed death behind 
them, the stench of which is so sickening that the 
men's stomachs are really nauseated. The wells 
have been poisoned, no water, and they have 

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to use "pinard" to shave in. No shelter for 
miles. 

What shall become of our men this winter? 
How are they to be lodged at all, and kept from 
being so overcrowded in their barracks that they 
will die like flies from pneumonia? 

Fortoiseau, September 25, 1918. 

Two young men came down last night. One is 
in the Marine Corps, and has been for several 
weeks in Joe's hospital. Both are the sons of 
people we know. 

After dinner we sat around the fire and talked 
. . . my heart grew sick and sad as I listened. 
The marine had been in the Belleau Wood fighting 
and then in the Soissons attack. The description 
of how the Marines went up into action without 
an ambulance or any medical aid, without the 
military support which they had expected from 
the French, was a description which made me feel 
more strongly than I did before, that the French 
can never be grateful enough to our Marines, 
that their courage and their fighting were worthy 
of the greatest soldiers in history. 

Then one of them told us how he was wounded. 
His regiment went into the fight without any 
stretcher-bearers. They had only two stretchers 
to start with, and the stretcher-bearers thought 
they were too heavy and threw them away. 

142 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

When he was wounded, it was in the arm, so he 
could walk. His oflScer told him to go back, as 
he would probably meet a French ambulance, and 
that the French ambulance would give him a lift 
to a certain railroad station where he could find 
an American surgeon who would examine him and 
put him on the train for Paris. 

He didn't meet a French ambulance but he 
presently met a French motor truck which was 
already so crowded with wounded that there was 
no room for him. The driver, seeing that the 
boy was suffering, and that his arm was hanging 
a bloody mass from his shoulder, told him to 
climb on the mud guard, to hold on with his good 
arm and that he would give him a lift to the rail- 
road station. He rode that way for about fifteen 
kilometres. You can imagine what his suffering 
must have been. When he reached the railroad 
station the officer who examined him, marked him 
with the "urgent" ticket and put him on the 
train for Paris. The train reached Paris at seven 
o'clock that night. Our regular medical corps 
had not at that time sufficient men in the railroad 
station to unload the cars, so that particular 
train, composed only of day coaches, was left in 
the station until seven o'clock the next morning 
when it was unloaded. This boy and the others 
were then taken to our hospital. He was oper- 
ated on two hours after he got there. Fortunately 

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for him. The man in the room at the hospital 
with him, lay for twenty -four hours in the weather, 
hours in the sun all through the long day. Hours 
in the rain all through the following night. 
Twenty-four hours of exposure before he was 
moved. Why he didn't die, God only knows. 
The men of that whole division had its wounded 
taken care of like that. And if one dares to say 
anything, hoping that American efficiency will 
have sense enough to rectify mistakes, and pro- 
cure stretcher-bearers, ambulances, hospitals, one 
is told that our organization is perfect and that 
military necessity sometimes involves the neglect 
of the wounded, their useless suffering, their need- 
less deaths. 

I could go on writing you pages about what our 
men go through but what would be the use. What 
I heard last night was the same kind of thing I 
heard in July from that blind mechanic, only this 
time it was from the son of a Pittsburgh million- 
aire, graduated from Groton, who had looked 
death in the face and lived through the kind of 
agony which the gospel calls "Bloody Sweat." 
In the Litany it says: "by thy Bloody Sweat." 

Fortoiseau, September 28, 1918. 

I suppose you realize that the dope I wrote you 
Tuesday has come true. The communiques of 
yesterday and this morning tell the tale. Note 
General Gouraud is attacking. 

144 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

I wonder if you noticed in yesterday's commu- 
nique the relative advances of the American and 
French armies? I heard a good deal yesterday 
which I cannot write. 

The news of the last few days shows that the 
eastern question is being well settled on this front 
and explains where some of the British army is 
being used. 

Our first army has covered itself with the same 
kind of glory as the Marines did. All I heard 
yesterday made my heart beat with pride. 

The American soldier is the greatest, bravest 
fighter now in the war. They fight so hard, and 
advance with such rapidity, that none of the 
others can keep up with them. Sometimes they 
take their objectives ahead of time, when the 
others are half way. But they are accomplishing 
what they are because they are under the marvel- 
ous genius of Marshal Foch. I think he will go 
down to posterity as the greatest soldier of France, 
and that some of the laurels Napoleon has had to 
himself this last hundred years will crown the war 
saviour of France. Napoleon fought for himself, 
Foch fights for his country. The impersonal mo- 
tive is the best. 

Fortoiseau, September 29, 1918. 

The map today speaks for itself. I am told the 
Allies handle Bulgaria well. That she asked 
Germany for help, which Germany was not able 
to spare, and that then the Allies got busy. They 

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say they will buy off Turkey next, and that after 
that Austria will give in and Germany will be 
left alone. As she herself says: "With my back 
to the wall." Is it not strange that in so short a 
time Germany should use that phrase of Sir 
Douglas Haig's.^ 

The battle on this front is raging fiercely, the 
Americans went fast at first but had to slow down 
yesterday as the German counter-attacks were ter- 
rific in strength of men, and abundance of gas 
shells. The next couple of days will be very 
important. In time, the line may become Lille- 
Metz. To-day the Germans are using their re- 
maining best troops in a final great effort, to- 
morrow they will go on the defensive all along 
the line. But as their front will be much shorter, 
the Allied armies will have stiff fighting against 
them. More heavy fighting is ahead in the im- 
mediate future. But there is no eighteen months 
ahead. The Germans are not beaten yet, and 
we are not safe in belittling the remains of the 
greatest army of the century. This army fights 
hard. How long it can keep it up is another 
question. 

Far more important than Metz would be the 
taking of Longwy and Briey. If we were able to 
get those two places that would mean the shut- 
ting up of Krupps inside of two months. From 
them comes the main supply for the munitions, 
etc. Thus the present advance is explained. 

146 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

A friend of ours, just over from America, 
shocked me. He talks as apparently one talks in 
America and sees what they see. Certainly you 
can't know very much. I mean about the war 
and of details connected with it. He said he was 
surprised at the optimism here that the war would 
be over by spring. He says they are still talking 
a long war in America. 

By the way, do you know that in the French 
army there are two kinds of tanks: the male and 
the female. The former are made with the guns, 
the latter with the mitrailleuse. Quite a Parisian 
idea '^ 

As things look now I hope to move into Paris 
about the 15th of November. Food is difficult in 
Paris. Eggs are eleven cents each; milk, when 
obtainable, eighteen sous a litre; beef is four 
francs 50/100 a pound for the cheapest cut; 
chickens are twenty-five francs; sole is fourteen 
francs a pound . . . and so on. So the food 
question is no better. Fortunately, with our 
whole lawn in potatoes, we shall have enough for 
the winter and we shall have carrots and onions. 
There is no fruit. We are still allowed only five 
hundred grammes of sugar per person a month. 

Fortoiseau, October 3, 1918. 

If I wrote you all I had heard about St. Mihiel 
my letter would never get to you. Evidently the 
truth is that that attack was one with limited ob- 

147 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

jectives. Until the pocket was straightened out, 
the present battles could not have been started, 
as there was a menace on the flanks which the 
Germans would have used to their advantage. 
There were very few casualties in that offensive 
and there were more Austrian than German guns 
used. Very little in the way of big guns or small 
ones either, as a matter of fact. 

This last attack in the Argonne has been a 
much more difficult matter, and had our troops 
been able to keep it up and reach their objectives, 
several important cities would have been cap- 
tured. Had the French taken Vouzieres, we 
would have taken Briey, Longwy and Metz. 

The Germans have evidently had time to bring 
up reenforcements in men and guns. Our men 
have had a terrible fight. We hold our gains, 
but for two days have not advanced. When you 
read in the communiques "we are consolidating 
our positions" you can think "we have met with 
strong resistance and are temporarily stopped" 
but the battle is going well, and this morning I 
received a letter from D. G. written on September 
thirtieth (he is with General Mangin) in which 
he says: 

"Things are going so well that I am indulging 
in the hope that the next fortnight will see the 
Boche debacle we have all been hoping for so 
long, but my judgment tells me that it is not 

148 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

probable this year, though just possible. His re- 
serves are gone but I am afraid he will be able to 
prevent a break-through and the rolling up of his 
wings." 

Undoubtedly a big retreat is being prepared, it 
may be to the Meuse or even to the Rhine. Lille 
has been evacuated of its civil population. That 
means they either expect to fight to a finish to 
hold it, or to get out themselves after they have 
completely destroyed the city. 

Major Sinclair (chief expert in the British army 
on fractures) is coming down tonight, so I may 
have news worth passing. 

Joe has just had another worry. 

I suppose that you don't know that the worst 
bug that grows in wounds is a bug called "strep- 
tococcus." It seems to attack and kill our men 
with alarming rapidity, giving a form of pneu- 
monia which they are unable to resist. It causes 
abscesses and produces sudden death in various 
ways. Sometimes it hides in the wound a long 
time without its being possible to discover it by 
laboratory examination. The only way to save a 
man from certain death is, if there is a sign of 
this bug in his wounded arm or leg, amputate the 
arm or leg as soon as possible, so as to prevent 
the bug from traveling further through the blood. 

I suppose Joe has done less amputation during 
his four years of war surgery than any other sur- 

149 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

geon. He is terribly conservative about it and 
these last two or three months he has had a great 
number of men brought into the hospital with 
this infection. He has saved the lives of many 
by amputation, when it was proved the'bug was 
there. I might tell you that neither the French 
nor the British are as susceptible to "streptococ- 
cus" as our men here. We have had more deaths 
from it than from any other cause. It has been 
a scourge for our wounded. 

Yesterday Joe got a letter from the head con- 
sultant surgeon, Colonel F., stating it had been 
reported to him that there were an extraordinary 
number of amputations in Joe's hospital and that 
he wished a full report from him about it. So 
hours had to be wasted in looking up records, etc. 
Joe didn't know that it could be finished last night. 

I suppose some "truck" with Philippine expe- 
rience went to this hospital as a visitor and then 
wrote him up in the report. Admit this is galling. 

Joe says they are quite capable of ordering him 
home to a Washington or New York job. Then 
they would be able to run the care of their wounded 
and their surgery on their own one-line track. 
He says sometimes he just can't bear this con- 
stant teasing. Of course, if they "kick" him up- 
stairs across the ocean, it would be a dreadful 
thing for us. They did that to Dr. P. All the 
New York surgeons may get the same deal. It is 

150 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

discouraging, when one works like a slave, getting 
really remarkable results, appreciated by the best 
French and British surgeons and then one has some 
American idiot take any old chance to "knock" 
or interfere. Joe takes his cases to heart, thinks 
them out, worries over them. I tell you, there 
are nights when he can't sleep, thinking of those 
men and what's the very best thing he can do for 
them. 

Fortoiseau, October 4, 1918. 

I wish you had been here last night to sit before 
the fire with us, listening to Major Sinclair talk. 

I wish that some of the staffs and nurses and 
orderlies from certain United States army hospi- 
tals could have listened to the way he spoke. To 
him, a comparatively small hospital of six hun- 
dred and fifty beds is as good an opportunity to 
do good work, helpful work, even brilliant work 
as the surgeon-in-chief makes it. He takes care 
of his patients with number so small of personnel, 
that I said to him: 

"Are you not shocked when you visit American 
hospitals and see how many more nurses and 
orderlies we need than you.^^" ... "I am a little 
shocked by the Canadian hospitals having such a 
large staff," he tactfully answered. 

As he talked, I felt he knew every case, every 
operation, every good point of each doctor and 
nurse under him; that he was able to give indi- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

vidual care to each patient in a way no man can 
in a big service. It seemed to prove that I am 
right in maintaining, as I always have, that these 
vast hospitals with thousands of beds do not 
stand for the efficiency of smaller ones, but the 
tools Sinclair works with, both male and female, 
have been tempered in the furnace of this war for 
four years. I don't believe the goddess "self" 
has crossed his threshold. She knows full well 
that she will find no worshippers nor friends in 
his hospital staff. 

But he didn't talk only of surgery. 

In the beginning of the war he was in the first 
retreat down from Charleroi. On the morning of 
September 1, 1914, the regiment he was with had 
come to a halt on this side of Villers-Cotterets. 
The soldiers were coming in hordes. There were 
men, officers, horses, ambulances, gun-carriages all 
in the hopeless confusion of weariness and exhaus- 
tion. Sinclair's feet were swollen and sore from 
the forced marches. His horses had been shot 
under him. The General in command was worry- 
ing about some wounded left behind in the forests 
of Villers-Cotterets. There were officers and men. 

Sinclair asked for an order to go back for them. 

"But it will mean certain capture," said the 
General. 

"Oh, they will surely not harm me, I am pro- 
tected by the Geneva Convention and if you will 

152 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

let me have the ambulance, and two orderlies, 
we can perhaps reach those men in the wood, and 
save them." 

The General gave the permission and Sinclair 
started for the town of Villers-Cotterets. 

There was only a quarter of a mile between the 
Germans and the British, so he reached the place 
in a few minutes. He stopped at a restaurant 
on the edge of the town. The streets were swarm- 
ing with Germans, rollicking, singing, shouting, 
drinking and all smoking large cigars. 

In the restaurant Sinclair saw a German offi- 
cer, so he asked him the way to headquarters. 
The officer, who was at a table with other officers, 
with several empty and several full bottles of 
champagne before them, smoking huge cigars, 
glared at Sinclair and did not answer him. 

A private at another table accosted him in 
English. Sinclair told him he wanted to go to 
headquarters in order to get a permit to go into 
the woods and find some British wounded who 
had been left behind. 

"Well," said the German, "sit down and eat 
first." 

He was eating a tin of lobster which he said he 
had stolen. 

"What God damned fools you English are to 
have gone into this war," he said with a London 
accent. " The French have let you in bad. They 

153 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

are not going to fight. They are running Hke 
rabbits. Have you seen a Frenchman in your 
retreat .f^" 

No, Sinclair had to admit that they didn't have 
French troops with them. The British had made 
their retreat alone. 

"Well," said the German, "it's all over, we 
shall be in Paris in three days. Aren't we going 
to have a 'time' there. All the wine, all the 
loot, all the women and a grand ball in the Tuile- 
ries Gardens. The French have no men. They 
are done. We have millions ..." and he went 
on and told Sinclair how he used to be a stock- 
broker clerk in London before the war. 

Sinclair finished his meal and told his orderlies 
who were at the next table to pay for everything 
they had eaten and that he would go to head- 
quarters and return when he got the permit. 

He went straight down the street, passing in- 
numerable Germans, all drinking, all smoking, 
all shouting and singing. 

At headquarters he was told to wait at the 
door. 

Presently a most perfect specimen of male 
beauty, about seven feet tall, with a silver helmet 
with a gold eagle on his head, and swathed in a 
pale blue military coat, falling from his shoulders 
(a modern Lohengrin) came out and looked at 
Sinclair as if he were a worm. After listening to 

154 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

his request, he went back into the house without 
saying a word. Then another officer came out 
and ushered Sinclair into a room where there 
were at least a dozen more officers, seated at a 
table, all drinking champagne and smoking the 
usual large cigars. They looked at Sinclair as 
if he were nothing at all. One of them asked him 
very haughtily what he wanted. He said he 
wanted a pass to go into the forest to get his 
wounded. After another wait, while the officers 
continued their jokes and their drink, as if he 
simply did not exist, a paper was brought to him 
by the only German officer who had condescended 
to address him. It was all in German, but with 
some begrudging aid he was able to read that it 
was what he wanted, an authorization to go into 
the forest and fetch his wounded, signed by the 
aid-de-camp of Von Kluck. 

Back he trudged through the crowded streets, 
nobody minding him, they were too drunk. He 
reached the restaurant without mishap. There he 
found that the Germans, having drunk up all the 
poor Frenchman's wine, had settled with him for 
a total of about fifty-five francs. The only hon- 
est pay had been from the British orderlies, for 
their and his meal. Worse still, the Germans 
had looted his kit, which was in the ambulance, 
and had taken every single thing he owned, every 
shirt, every toilet article, his soap, shaving things, 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

everything. He had a small penknife and five 
francs left in his pocket. Such are German offi- 
cers. There was no use in saying anything. 

So he started with his men. It was night when 
they reached the forest. They were going along 
the road slowly when they heard the march of 
approaching troops in the dark. Suddenly, they 
were beside them on the road. In an instant, a 
click, a thousand clicks, all the rifles were levelled 
at the ambulance, and an officer accosted them. 
Sinclair showed his permit, the officer read it by 
his electric torch, then he threw it back at him, 
Sinclair catching it in the air. The guns were 
lowered, the order to march was given, the am- 
bulance started on again. A second time they 
were held up in the same way. Sinclair said 
these moments were full of horror, in the dark, 
helpless, knowing that if only one shot was fired, 
a volley would reduce them and their ambulance 
to pulp . . . and the new moon was shining 
through the great trees. It was a night full of 
beauty, and the tall trees seemed like trees in a 
fairy story, only behind these in their shadows 
lay death, suffering, men writhing in agony. 

Suddenly they came upon their wounded, lying 
in a row by the side of the road. The Germans 
had bandaged up their wounds, and left some 
water bottles near. This was as they did early 
in the war, those days in which there was still 

156 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

some vestige of humane treatment, long since left 
behind. Now, the bayonet does this work with 
less trouble and a quicker death. 

The orderlies and Sinclair toiled one long weary 
hour, loading eleven of the worst cases into the 
ambulance. Then they started back. He was 
hopeless as to how the men would be cared for, if he 
went back to those drunken revelers in the town. 

Presently he saw a nun walking. He stopped 
the ambulance and asked her if she could tell 
him where to take his load of suffering men, with 
broken legs, broken arms, torn chests, one man 
with a broken jaw. 

"Come with me to our convent near here, a 
French hospital is there, we shall make room for 
you," she said. 

When they reached the convent they found it 
already full of French wounded, but the nun got 
some sisters to help. The convent had been a 
girls' school, so there were beds and bedding and 
towels. The French surgeon in charge and Sin- 
clair got to work on the wounds of the men. 
They were just finishing a difficult operation on a 
fractured leg, when a German officer appeared in 
the doorway. Addressing Sinclair, he said to 
him that he was to come at once, that there were 
some ambulances in the yard about which he 
wanted information. Sinclair said he knew only 
about his own. 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

"But you are the only officer here, so you must 
be responsible for these other ambulances." 

"They are not mine," answered Sinclair. 

"But you are the only officer and I shall hold 
you responsible for any arms in them." 

"Well," said Sinclair, "what I must be respon- 
sible for, I suppose I must, but I never saw these 
ambulances and I know nothing about their con- 
tents excepting that as they are either ours or 
the French's, I am sure that they have no arms 
concealed," and he started to continue putting on 
the splint. 

And in spite of Sinclair's explanation that the 
patient was in pain and in danger, he had to 
drop his things and follow the German. When he 
got into the yard he saw Germans looking all over 
his own car, all the underneath part, to see as they 
said, if machine guns were not hidden there in a 
false bottom. It seems that this is the way the 
Germans were transporting their machine guns at 
that time, and were thus able to get them into 
positions which the Allies could not imagine they 
had been able to reach. Their ambulances would 
go along the road deceiving the Allies by their 
red crosses and would drop these guns without 
stopping, so no one knew they had done so. The 
waiting infantry would pick them up at night, 
and then open up on the French or English, as 
the case might be. 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

Of course, there were no arms of any kind in 
Sinclair's car. In one of the others were about a 
dozen rifles which had evidently been thrown in 
by weary soldiers in their retreat. The Germans 
pounced on them, broke them into little pieces 
which they threw over the wall or into the road. 
To Sinclair this seemed shocking, a wanton de- 
struction of good material which the Germans 
might easily have used. 

"Explain these arms," said the German officer, 
"as I hold you responsible for them." 

"Well," said Sinclair, "you have the advan- 
tage over me, for you have seen these ambulances 
once more than I have. You saw them first be- 
fore you came up to me. I didn't know that 
there were any ambulances here, excepting my 
own, and I therefore could not know what their 
contents were. Anyhow, anyone can see that 
these few guns could do but little harm, and were 
evidently thrown in the cars by retreating soldiers 
to lighten their packs." 

"But you are responsible," reiterated the Ger- 
man with weary stubbornness. "I shall report 
this. You may be shot in the morning." Off he 
went, leaving Sinclair in a far from pleasant frame 
of mind. He went back into the convent to the 
nuns. They made him some coffee and an omelet 
and fixed up a bed on the floor. Sinclair said he 
slept the instant he lay down. Suddenly he was 

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awakened by guttural German oaths, and prod- 
ded by a bayonet he opened his very sleepy eyes, 
to meet the steely glare of a pair of German eyes. 

"Get up, you and your patients are to be out 
of here in five minutes." 

"But we can't, it is an impossibility, they are 
too ill, few of them can be moved. I can't leave 
them." 

"Yes, you must, even if they can't. In five 
minutes you be in the yard ready to march. 
You are a prisoner." 

The chapel clock struck four. Sinclair had had 
about one hour's sleep. 

In a very few minutes he was in the yard and 
was marching to the headquarters in the town. 
On the road he passed Germans. They all spat 
upon him. "Dirty English," they said in their 
own language and in English. There were sev- 
eral other prisoners marching with them. In 
front of the headquarters building they were kept 
standing in the cold dawn for two hours. All the 
time troops passing. They were trying to pass 
near enough to either spit or give a hit with their 
bayonets. The officers generally spat. 

At the end of weary hours during which they 
stood huddled together, they were started on 
their march. 

All along the road the passing troops jibed and 
insulted, hit and spat. 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

At noon they reached their destination, Vivieres. 

There their guard left them. There was no 
chance of escape. 

Sinclair was standing in the square of the vil- 
lage. In the center were heaped all sorts of 
things from the church which stood at one side of 
the square. There were carved benches, images, 
crucifixes, candlesticks, vestments, everything, 
which had evidently been taken from the inside 
of the poor little church opposite. It was Sin- 
clair's first sight of the German respect for sacred 
property. 

He crossed the square and opened the door of 
the church. 

Before him was a terrible sight. The whole 
floor was covered with wounded and dead, British 
and French, lying close against each other on the 
stone floor. The living were all wounded, faces 
with jaws blown off, eyes gouged out, broken 
arms and legs, chests with great gaping wounds. 

The dead were lying against the living. Some 
had been dead for days and were stiff and stark, 
others were still warm. Blood was all over the 
floor, filth and stench so sickening of death and 
life that one could hardly swallow the air. In 
the middle of the floor was one tin pail of water, 
and here and there a poor wretch, able to crawl, 
was trying to get to it. Cries and groans and 
flies, flies crawling from the decay of the dead into 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

the open wounds of the Kving, flies over every- 
thing. Blood over everything, stinking in its 
staleness. The devil's charnel house. And in all 
this agony were about three hundred and fifty liv- 
ing men, writhing there with no one to do any- 
thing for them, no food, nothing, nothing, but 
that one tin pail of water. 

The horror of war seemed to turn Sinclair's 
heart into stone. 

All his life he will see that sight, all his life he 
will hear those cries, and through all his life he 
will never forgive the Germans. But there was 
no time to be lost if life was to be saved. He 
went out into the streets to find a German ofiicer. 
The village was full of Germans. They were 
drunk and throwing furniture out of the windows 
of the houses. They roared with laughter as a 
grand piano smashed to pieces in the street, 
hurled from a first floor window. Big clocks, lit- 
tle clocks, lamps, china, were falling everywhere. 
It was a riot of destruction. The deserted houses 
stood desecrated by barbarians. Sinclair had to 
dodge the falling things as he walked along. An 
oflScer was finally met, sober enough to direct 
him to headquarters. From there he was sent 
to the chateau at the edge of the town, where 
the German lazaret had been installed. The 
head doctor, a venerable old man, who looked 
kindly, received him, but his heart was German. 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

He refused the needed help. After much talking, 
Sinclair persuaded him to let him have a certain 
house to turn into a hospital, the use of some 
Germans to clear the house for occupancy and 
some other Germans to help him bury the dead in 
the little church and to transport the wounded. 
Grudgingly, the German doctor consented to this, 
but he would give no medical supplies of any 
kind. He said he could spare nothing for the 
French and English wounded. 

So Sinclair started out with his Germans, first 
to bury the dead and clean up the church, then 
to get his house in order. As they remembered 
their dead, he remembered the sight he had passed 
that night in the wood when he was looking for 
his wounded. Suddenly the ambulance had come 
to the edge of a great pit. On the further side 
from them was the German burial squad. There 
was a row of carts heaped with dead. Those 
were dumped on the ground and stripped. Then, 
one man would take the hands, another man the 
feet of each corpse and with a "einz, zwei, drei, 
hop," they would toss the body into the pit, and 
among the dead there were as many French and 
English as there were Germans. All dead men 
were the same to them. . . . 

At last the church was cleared. A few wounded 
who could walk helped, as well as the other pris- 
oners who had been marched to the village with 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

Sinclair. He was the only officer, so assumed 
command. 

They went to the house assigned to them. The 
German way of clearing up for a hospital was to 
throw everything not needed into the street, 
breaking and then making a bonfire of the big 
things. 

Then Sinclair transported the wounded and 
sent his men to find anything they could for ban- 
dages. "Go loot for our men, take all the cur- 
tains, ribbons, towels and cooking things you can 
find," he said to them. These were English (the 
Germans had left them) and were new at such a 
game. Urgent need compelled them, and before 
very long Sinclair had a stack of white curtains, 
chintz curtains, all sorts of strings and ribbons in 
a big cauldron, boiling. Then he said to his men : 

" Go and loot for food. Our men are starving." 

And while they were gone he waited until the 
curtains, etc., had been boiled sterile, then he 
fixed up a kitchen table in the yard and with two 
big oil lamps got ready to operate. And he did. 
Some of the men could help. 

Presently the food hunters returned. They had 
chickens, rabbits, carrots, potatoes, and one man 
had a live sheep. Sinclair had found a big mar- 
mite, and started that boiling the soup. The 
sheep stopped him. He said he drew the line at 
killing a sheep. He didn't know how. Did any 

164 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

of the men know how? Yes, one man, who said 
he was the cousin of a butcher and had seen sheep 
killed, volunteered. So the sheep was killed and 
Sinclair started cooking. He threw everything 
into the marmite, all the animals, all the vege- 
tables, some salt and flour rifled from a grocery 
shop and it was a grand cuisine. 

The men enjoyed the soup, only that sheep 
meat was so tough you just couldn't get your 
teeth through it. Yet the men were so starving, 
some of them lay there sucking it. One man 
kept crying all the time for food and drink. He 
had no jaw left. 

Sinclair couldn't bear it. He went back to the 
German hospital again to ask the German doctor 
for a feeding tube. He refused to lend one. Sin- 
clair was desperate. He knew the man would 
die in agony before his eyes if he couldn't give 
him something. One of the men had stolen a 
cow and they had milked her. All he wanted 
was a tube, so he took a piece of gas tubing he 
found in the street, boiled it clean and fed the 
man the milk. 

Day after day he worked there, a terrible life 
of hunting for food and living on one's wits. 

The 12th of September Sinclair said to one of 
the men: 

"The guns sound nearer," and that night they 
heard troops marching down the street. They 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

closed the shutters of the house and kept very 
quiet, hoping that in their hurried departure the 
Germans would forget to take them along. 

The 13th Sinclair heard the mitrailleuse. Al- 
ways the German troops were marching through 
the village with their great guns and their wagons. 

On the morning of the 14th of September Sin- 
clair got up at dawn. He unbarricaded the door 
and went out. The village was empty. Not a 
soul was left. But the German hospital in the 
chateau was left. The Germans always consider 
military necessity before either their wounded or 
their hospital corps. 

Sinclair walked down the street and out of the 
village to a high place beyond where he could see 
far over the plateau and the ravines and the 
great white road leading to the Aisne. 

The sun was rising. Suddenly, over the brow 
of the hill he saw a figure coming. He recognized 
the helmet of a French cuirassier on a horse. 
Then came others. The Uhlans were retreating 
on the Aisne road, they had reached a clump of 
trees. Their mitrailleuse started on the French. 
Then in the rays of the morning sun the "seventy- 
fives" came over the hill. The Uhlans broke and 
ran. 

Sinclair walked toward the French officer. He, 
fearing treachery, pulled out his revolver, but 
Sinclair explained that he was an English officer 

166 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

in charge of a make-shift hospital, that there were 
no Germans in the village, excepting the Germans 
in the chateau who were wounded. 

The officer and Sinclair and the troops marched 
into the village. First they went to the German 
lazaret. All the patients started to yell and howl, 
thinking that they were going to be cut to pieces. 
But the French arranged for their evacuation and 
the old doctor and his staff were escorted to the 
Aisne by two soldiers and left to follow after their 
regiment. As the German doctor left he turned 
to Sinclair: 

"Yesterday I was the commanding officer here. 
Now it is you who are in command." He saluted 
and passed on. 

"Well," I interrupted, "what did the French 
do to you when they saw all that you had done 
for their wounded.^" 

"Oh," answered Sinclair, "they tried to kiss 
us all and made a great fuss and then they ar- 
ranged for me to go down to Paris where I went 
to the Grand Hotel and I was put up for nothing." 

A few weeks afterward he got leave, and went 
to England, to find his wife frantic, as he had 
been reported missing by the War Office. One 
evening about October 20th, he was dining with 
his wife in London when a telegram was brought 
in to her. It was from the War Office saying he 
had been found. 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

And then, just as if he had told us an everyday 
story, Sinclair went back to fractures, and told 
Joe how criminal it would be to transport fracture 
cases, with very few exceptions, over to America, 
before they were united. He said that he would 
not even risk sending his cases to England from 
Boulogne, that when they put them on a trans- 
port to America, those in charge might just as 
well bury them at once, for if they lived, which 
was doubtful, they would only have deformed 
limbs for the rest of their lives, to limp through 
the years with. 

P. S. — I must add this bit. We had spoken of 
reprisals by our troops when they crossed the 
Rhine, and the fighting was on German soil, in 
German towns. I said I was dead against the 
idea of our men burning and murdering, as the 
Germans had in Belgium and France, that I 
believed in making Germany pay for her wan- 
ton destruction in taxes and money, but not 
by a return orgy of the same kind as their 
own. 

Sinclair looked at me for a minute or two in 
silence, then: 

"If you had been with the British troops on 
the outskirts of a village, at the end of the main 
street, and been the officer in command and seen 
the German officers at the other end of the street 
prodding women with their bayonets to stand in 

168 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

front of them as barricades, the women running 
wildly to and fro, some clasping babies and chil- 
dren to their breasts, the German soldiers shoot- 
ing women down, not taking the trouble to kill 
the children, and then dragging the dead bodies 
with their load, by their hair, and making them 
into barricades, lying down behind them, to shoot 
at our men from comparative safety, our men 
refusing to charge; but when they did and got 
those Germans I don't know how they killed 
them, it was a dog's death; now, if you had seen 
this would you still believe that our men are not 
to revenge those horrors ? Not by the murder of 
German women, but by destruction of their vil- 
lages and towns. Do you think our soldiers who 
remember such things as I am telling you, will be 
controlled by their officers, when they have their 
feet on German soil? Could you believe still in 
tax money to settle our score ? " And I found no 
answer in my heart. 

Fortoiseau, October 6, 1918. 

This morning the telephone central called me 
up very early to tell me of the central powers' 
offer of peace. She was very much excited, hop- 
ing that surely President Wilson would not ac- 
cept the German terms, saying that the Germans 
must be made to pay for all they had done to 
France, surely he wouldn't accept their offers, 
surely it is only because we are beating them now 

169 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

in this very moment that they are afraid, and 
their Kaiser speaks Kke that. 

I imagine that is just about the truth and the 
way all the French feel this morning. 

To me, it seems that Germany must be on the 
edge of a terrible political debacle, and she fears 
for everything, especially that Turkey and Aus- 
tria will ask for any terms they can get. 

The Kaiser was smart in addressing Wilson, 
instead of Foch, for it is flattery and an astute 
bit of politics, full of dangerous possibilities. In 
yesterday's papers it was said that Clemenceau 
had spent all the previous day at the Grand 
Quartier General with the Marshal. I am sure 
they were discussing just this move of Germany's 
and how to meet it. The military answer is the 
only one to give, for the sake of all the dead and 
for the future of all the living. 

Fortoiseau, October 11, 1918. 

Believe me, we are living the tea-party in 
"Alice in Wonderland" every day of our lives. 
All the characters are here: the mad hatter, the 
dormouse, the duchess and the whole pack of 
cards. The knave of hearts is still playing the 
same old tricks and the duchess is still saying 
"off with their heads." 

Your account of New York is shocking. But 
the people of whom you write are not all of Amer- 

170 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

ica nor even all of New York. There is good in 
our race. I like them better than any other and 
I would rather be an American than anything 
else. Monday! went into Paris. The Wilson 
answer came out in the newspaper. Everyone 
was buying it, you have no idea of the excitement. 

I saw a mutual friend of ours who is over here 
on oflficial business. He spoke as if he thought 
the war was over — said he was seriously thinking 
of sending for his wife. Then he said he won- 
dered if it would be safe for Americans over here 
after the war was over, whether the French might 
not keep us all as hostages. And the reasons he 
gave I am not going to write. 

The Wilson answer has caused a variety of 
comment here. The papers have been given the 
"tip" to say it's grand and perfect, but there is 
quite some criticism. The French seem to feel 
that Foch should have been directly addressed, 
as the General against the Bulgars was, and they 
remark that Wilson doesn't say we are Allies. 
Are we? Or are we in a position to deal sepa- 
rately with Germany ? Had Wilson agreed upon 
his answer with Clemenceau and Lloyd George.^ 
And much more in the same key. 

Personally, I think there is one good point in 
the answer, and that is, that an answer was made. 
If none had been sent, or merely a brief refusal, 
all Germany would have been aroused and united, 

171 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

and the British labor party and the French social- 
ists would have had "an axe to grind" together 
against us. Of course, the French howl over the 
idea that Germany should be permitted to get 
out of France and Belgium with all her supplies, 
guns and munitions. They say that is what she 
is trying now to do, of course that is what she 
wants. 

General opinion is that Germany is beaten, 
really beaten, but that she may try to save her- 
self as best she can, by any means, that guns and 
armies are the best answer to that German note, 
which is really the cry of despair. And the news 
day by day is strangely good, one can hardly be- 
lieve that we are winning the war at last, that the 
end is in sight, that this terrible, unconquerable 
thing, the German army, is moving back. 

And then a horrible fear comes into my heart, 
I read the things which the socialists say in their 
meetings and I wonder what will happen here 
after the war, and whether there is any chance of 
our having a "Russian" time of it. I really get 
frightened, and yet my better reason tells me 
that it is foolish, that the government is strong, 
that the army is down on the socialists, who have 
used their voting power to compel their deputies 
to keep them out of the trenches and in the fac- 
tories, that our own army is here. 

I suppose I have been next door to so many 
172 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

horrors for so long that my nerves are jumping. 
I have a nuisance of an imagination, I always see 
things: visions of my babies being murdered be- 
fore my eyes by a crazy mob, visions of riot and 
bloodshed . . . and then I remember how after 
other wars I have read that there has not been a 
revolution, but a wild and uncontrollable craving 
for the joys of life, for peace, for wine, woman 
and song. One only has to read history and yet 
I get frightened. What do they say in America? 
I shall ask the General on Sunday when he comes 
to lunch and I know he will say to me: "Those 
dirty people ! Commit horrors upon us, never in 
the world." He hates socialists and all their 
concerns. 

Fortoiseau, October 13, 1918. 

Last evening I was sitting by the drawing-room 
fire, reading: "France and England may, by the 
abuse of their strength, long defer the period of 
its utter exhaustion, unhappily for all nations. 
But I will venture to say that the fate of all civil- 
ized nations is concerned in the termination of the 
war, the flames of which are raging throughout 
the whole world. I have the honor to be, etc. 
(signed) Bonaparte." These words were written 
to the British government in 1799. Would it not 
seem as if yesterday is today ? 

The telephone rang and I was told by someone 
that Germany had accepted the Wilson note, be- 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

cause Turkey and Austria had given Germany an 
ultimatum, that unless she did, and within 
twenty-four hours, they would each make their 
own peace with the Allies. 

The news in a way depresses me. What does 
it mean ? The consequences ? Oh, the difference 
in the civilian and military point of view ! Wilson 
is not a soldier, he is very far away, and his ideas 
and Foch's ideas must be radically apart. 

I should like to see a tableau, ending like a 
David picture, Foch and the general staffs of all 
the Allies and of the "associates" on the battle- 
field of Sedan, meeting Ludendorff, the Kaiser, the 
"Kroney" and Hindenburg, having the swords of 
the vanquished handed over to the Marshal of 
France who won his victory from them. With 
Alexander, Foch can say: "I will not steal the 
victory." 

And this modern incarnation of all that is best 
in France should have the final word. I think he 
will, no matter what those who not so long ago 
said "we are too proud to fight," attempt to 
coerce him into doing. 

Fortoiseau, October 15, 1918. 

I saw quite a few people last Sunday, and again 
in town on Monday. Some friends of the Presi- 
dent's who felt the war was over, thought it was 
up to the Allies to decide among themselves, as 
to their terms, etc., that Wilson had started Ger- 

174 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

many "talking" (which I never thought anybody 
would find a difficult thing to do) , that she is really 
beaten, that therefore, the President's idea is that 
there should be a just "peace" which would be 
as fair to the conquered as to the conquerors, 
etc. 

Monday I ran into both the French and Ameri- 
can opinions. There was much talk as to whether 
Wilson had consulted with Clemenceau and 
Lloyd George or not, before he answered. There 
were people who said that Clemenceau was furious 
about it. There seemed to be an atmosphere of 
fear of the next move, to put it mildly. 

The note published this morning made me feel 
that the cables had been used, and that the care- 
fully guarded news of the French papers reveal 
how much the first note had been criticised "in 
camera." The fear which is in my heart is that 
a peace now, with victory within our reach, would 
be a terrible thing, meaning another and fiercer 
war within twenty years. 

Germany in all her parts must be beaten. Then 
the world can breathe freely again, free from all 
those silent underground preparations of the last 
forty years when all Europe was fooled and the few 
knaves in France who knew were in Germany's 
pay and kept their silence. What she has done 
once, she will do again. The dog returns to his 
vomit. So Germany to hers. A female cur she 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

is, an unclean dangerous thing, crawling on her 
belly like a viper in the gutters of the world. 

Peace with that ! My God, let her wash the 
blood from her foul body first. Human beings 
can't touch that defilement and clasp that hand 
until the price paid has made it less vile and 
filthy. 

Our friend the White King, being a pacifist, an 
optimist, and a fuss-cat, would advocate peace, 
peace at once, at any price, so no more of his 
idiotic mistakes would be found out. His sins 
are the sins of a fool rather than a knave but 
they have cost us all terrible things. 

I wish he would go back through the looking- 
glass and stay on the other side. Teddy Roose- 
velt must be grand about him. I know he also 
keeps "Alice in Wonderland" handy on his book- 
shelf alongside "Alice through the Looking- 
Glass." You really ought to read those two 
classics over. They are so pat on so many people 
just now. Sometimes a smile saves a tear. 

I think the fighting in the Argonne is fierce. 
Our men are having the best remaining German 
divisions thrown against them. The Germans 
must hold there, for if that flank gives way, de- 
bacle is upon them. All depends upon the situa- 
tion there. Everywhere else, the Allies, or shall 
I say "associates" (to be with the high ones in 
the world, "Specialite de la maison," and not a 

176 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

brown house either), the AlKes, I repeat, as I am 
a New Yorker, are doing splendidly, and the Ger- 
mans are going back faster and faster. The day 
their line breaks in the Argonne, the military vic- 
tory is ours. 

Fortoiseau, October 19, 1918. 

Day by day we are pushing the Germans back, 
day by day we are nearer to the hour when they 
will unconditionally surrender. They are still 
fighting hard, especially against our army, for all 
depends on that, and furthermore one must give 
credit to Ludendorff for the orderly manner of 
his retreat, saving his army so far from debacle. 

I think the Germans will lay down their arms 
by December 15th. That seems to me just about 
their limit, and we shall go to Berlin, not fighting 
our way there, but as an army of occupation to 
see that the Allies' terms are enforced. It seems 
almost impossible to appreciate that it is nearly 
over — that this horror of suffering and death is 
nearly ended, and that you and many other wives 
will soon have your husbands with you again. In 
eight months from now they will probably be 
sending the troops home. 

Do you realize that the British victories of the 
past week have been tremendous factors in the 
situation.? That the much maligned Fifth Army 
has been doing great work? That it was the 
army to present Lille back to France ? 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

It seems as if the Allies are sweeping on with 
more and more success . . . the change from 
three short months ago is such a big one that I 
can't get used to it . . . for now I never hear the 
guns any more, I no longer listen to the locomo- 
tives whistling through the nights, driving their 
burden of soldier-laden trains to the front. We 
are far away from the fighting line now and the 
silence of peace is over the country. And the 
days when we shall be together again are not dis- 
tantly vague in 1920. 

We have lived through a terrible summer, and 
all of us will forever carry the marks of it through 
our lives. I can't push it out of my mind. My 
heart is still heavy, and sometimes so sad, that 
you and I and our affairs are nothing in the great 
fearful cauldron of humanity's anguish. 

What do we matter ? 

Self has always been my great enemy, that 
persistent, insistent desire to make all those I 
have loved go my way, do my bidding, grant my 
heart's desire. I know my own self, and I have 
tried to put it away since the war. So help me 
God, I'll cremate its corpse if I can ever murder it. 

Fortoiseau, October 22, 1918. 

I do not think you need worry about after the 
war. All these men have learned what loneliness 
is. They will be hungry for their wives and their 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

firesides, for all the tenderness of love and their 
home life. Yes, even those who may have 
strayed will be the best they know how to be to 
their wives. As to "life," well, the history of 
every war shows that the returning warrior wants 
the smiles and the laughter, the forgetting of the 
hell left behind and, above all, peace. A year at 
the front ages a man, inasmuch as it increases 
capacities and develops sensibilities in a measure 
I do not think the people at home appreciate. As 
it is not going to be a long war, I think the labor 
question will be solved, and this war has saved us 
from a class war, which might have torn the 
hearts out of all the civilized peoples of the earth. 
Our army, and every army, stands for law, order, 
discipline. Our returning soldiers will not stand 
for any nonsense from the " stay-at-homes " w^ho 
might want to make trouble. I hear how the 
French talk, the English say: "We are settling the 
Boche and we will settle the labor leaders after- 
wards if they try any monkey-business." And 
our own will feel the same way. 

I sat next to General P. yesterday, who had 
returned from our front yesterday morning. He 
said he had never seen a finer army than ours. 
That our men and our oflScers were splendid: big, 
strong, good morale, excellent discipline. He 
rather underlined that, saying it was remarkable 
to see such discipline in such a new army. He 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

said they fought like heroes. They have been up 
against it. The fighting was all in the Argonne 
forest. Roads, so few, and under the German 
fire. Death at every moment all around and the 
Germans fighting like heroes too, not giving them- 
selves up, even when the Americans came upon 
them — being bayoneted, rather than surrender. 
He said the Germans had not fought this way 
since the early part of the war — that they were 
fighting the same way against the English — that 
every advance was costly — that the great Bel- 
gian victory was a newspaper one, as the Ger- 
mans had retreated there, because they wanted 
to shorten their line. He said the biggest battle 
of the war will be on the Meuse, and that if we 
win there, and by we I mean all of us, the war is 
over. But this general said that although the 
war is won, it is not over, and will not be over 
before next June. He says the Germans can still 
put up a great fight and that the newspapers are 
unreliable and untrue in the pictures they give of 
the present fighting. 

Then he went on about the Americans, and 
said that what made me feel that we were paying 
a heavier price than we need, was because of the tre- 
mendous difference in the way the military part of 
the war was run, with the medical and other S.O.S. 
services. He said the military was extraordinarily 
good in every detail, equipment, food, etc., hut 

180 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

that the care and transportation of the wounded 
was shocking. Figures and facts came fast and 
made me blush with shame and mortification and 
rage. Mind you this man is an Englishman, an 
outsider, and he saw. And then I think about 
all I read about the wonderful care of our wounded 
and I am told by our army men that everything 
is "all right." 

There is no use my writing you all he told me. 
Some day the men will tell and then heaven help 
those responsible ! 

Later in the afternoon I saw a French friend of 
mine who seemed to think the first message of 
the President's was bad but that his answer to 
Austria is the worst political break any of the 
Allies have yet made. She says the French and 
the English are worried over what the next move 
from Washington will be and that the prevailing 
idea of her circle is, that neither France nor Eng- 
land is being consulted. The attitude over here 
is not what some people would have you believe. 
Washington is very far away, and I wonder if 
those who see the President are not being cautious 
and saying the easy pleasant thing rather than 
the truthful one. 

Both France and England were fighting with 
their heart's blood and the flower of their youth 
and strength, in the days when we were still too 
proud to fight, and they feel the first word to be 

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SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

said to Germany in answer to any note should 
come from them. Justice, they say, yes, but 
strangle the beast, making it impossible for our 
children's children to be shot to death right here, 
by guns fired in Berlin with a range of hundreds 
of miles, or poisoned by germs, dropped from air- 
planes. The next German war, if she is not made 
to pay and unconditionally surrender, will be a 
thousand times more horrible than this, and we 
will have to fly over to America to get away from 
the battlefront. There won't be any front, for 
the Germans will do everything from their own 
door-step. You have no idea how the French are 
talking . . . that's what I hear, as an outsider, 
so you can imagine what is said to their own com- 
patriots. 

Colonel House is due here in a few days so we 
may all hear a big piece of news before long. 
Whenever he comes we all know he bears the 
unwritten word from President Wilson. 

Germany's answer is an exceedingly clever doc- 
ument, and a very dangerous one. I shall watch 
out for breakers ahead, but you won't hear any- 
thing about them unless they break. The close 
shaves we get sometimes are rather shivery. 

Fortoiseau, October 25, 1918. 

There is no use my writing you about the St. 
Mihiel fight. I might not sound like the news- 
papers. 

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KATHERINE BLAKE 

As for your references to our divisions north, 
that kind of talk is not very reliable and generally 
comes from the type of American officer and pri- 
vate who is too selfish to face the conditions of 
war and who "kicks" about the difference in 
food, whether he is with the British or the French, 
and is not much good. We talked about this last 
night, and all three, M., D. G. and Joe said prac- 
tically what I have written. In fact, D. illus- 
trated his remarks with facts he had witnessed 
with Americans, with the French, which I haven't 
time to write you. 

Second-rate Americans, gentlemen, floor-walkers, 
or workmen, are alike. Their provincialisms make 
them hard to handle. The main bone of conten- 
tion is, that the British have tea for breakfast, 
and the French, no breakfast at all. I have heard 
them. Food, that's the rub, and yet our services 
have been the worst on record. Nothing in the 
history of the care of the French wounded at the 
time of the battle of the Marne in 1914 equals 
what I might write you. It's the same about the 
other services, food and mails included. 

I try to put you wise. I wonder if you are on 
to some of the things I write you ? Incidentally, 
I don't think that Surgical Congress at home such 
a big thing, over here is the all absorbing work, 
and some of the men at the front in the medical 
corps are doing the work of ten. They die from 
exhaustion at their posts. 

183 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

But your vigil for W. is no longer so endless. 
Here, and sooner than you appreciate, is my 
answer to the last sentence in your letter of the 
third. 

I am too tired to write any more and yet I am 
full of so many things touching the war, and the 
President's last note, published this morning. 
The editorial I am enclosing may throw a little 
French light on it. The Herald did not quote 
Herve in its consensus of French praise on the 
note. Our papers never give you anything but 
the praise we get. Our editors must think we are 
a nation of idiots, needing to be eternally patted 
on the back. 

Fortoiseau, October 26, 1918. 

Today there is a chance that we may not move 
into Paris as soon as I expected. The accounts I 
got last night of the so-called "grippe" made me 
hesitate on account of the children. The deaths 
are many and one day I was in town, I stopped 
counting the hearses I met, after the fifteenth. It 
seems it comes from the front and is a terrible 
thing which kills in six hours. The corpses turn 
black immediately after death. This sounds 
more like the plague of the middle ages than the 
"grippe" of our century. Lots of people say it is 
cholera. Anyhow, unless the death rate is less 
high I shall put off moving. 

D. G. came last night. He had gone into 
184 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Laon, and all those places, with General Mangin. 
He said people were overwhelming in their ova- 
tion to Mangin and Clemenceau. He had been 
at lunch with Clemenceau the day he went to 
Laon, and he was impressed by the vigor, the 
enthusiasm, the vitality of this great old man. 
Continually they had guests of distinction at 
Mangin's table. 

At mess of a certain etat-major, for days the 
great topic was what would Wilson's answer be. 
One afternoon an American oflficer went in to see 
the General on business. The General was writ- 
ing, and without stopping, he handed the Ameri- 
can a paper. "The Wilson answer," he said, and 
looked at the officer in silence. That evening at 
dinner everything was talked of, every current 
subject discussed, but for the first time this week 
the note was not mentioned. The next morning 
at breakfast and that evening at dinner, not a 
word. The American could not stand it, so he 
said: "What do you think of the President's 
note?" . . . "What do you.?" And then the 
words came thick and fast. Apparently, they all 
felt that Washington is very far away, and among 
other things, had been noticed, that Wilson said 
in the note that we were "associated" with the 
Allies. He did not say that we were Allies. 
They were wondering about this. 

It is now up to Pershing. If he is a first-class 
185 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

General he will carry through the present push in 
the Argonne. We all have seen what Mangin, 
Gouraud and Haig can do with three hundred 
thousand men, now we shall see what our Ameri- 
can General will do with seven hundred and 
fifty thousand men. All depends on the present 
push. 

While D. and I talked Joe was walking the 
floor talking about the care of the wounded. He 
said we are horribly short of nurses, that we have 
not the transports for them as so many Y. M. C. A. 
and R. C. workers are crowding the steamers, 
that he would like to send every nurse in his hos- 
pital out to the front and go into the streets and 
make every Y. M. C. A. and R. C. lady he met 
take off their belts and their uniforms and, put- 
ting them into nursing clothes, make them leave 
the cigarettes and the letter writing undone. 
Take care of the wounded, "My God," he said, 
"our men are dying for lack of nurses, and these 
damn fool people are wasting their capacity for 
saving them, in * extras.'" . . . He has seen so 
much in the last few days of overcrowding and 
understaffing that he is very intolerant of any- 
thing which is non-essential. He sounded just 
like the British General did on Monday, only Joe 
gets so upset that his eyes are full of tears and he 
feels he ought to work day and night and kill 
himself. 

186 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Mind you, now we can't blame anybody. We 
have our own army with its own service and we 
are not relying on the French. Military necessity 
should demand that our medical service shall be 
as well done as any other service, for in the long 
run military efficiency will be harmed. 

Oh, if only we were not so pleased with our- 
selves as a nation, so sure that we did everything 
better than anybody else. 

One message home I wish I could give with 
wide publicity, and that is: "Stop sending lady 
helpers, stop cheering the soldier on his way to 
the front, and send nurses to save his life on his 
way back from the front, and to help him in his 
death hour when he is wounded beyond help. 
Stop sending anything but the things for the care 
of the wounded, leave the candies and the presents 
unsent, save our men, care for them, let their 
wives and their sisters and their sweethearts 
come over and nurse anywhere, for everywhere 
women to nurse are needed. And I say even, 
stop sending troops until we have all the doctors, 
surgeons and nurses and hospital supplies we 
need to give care to those of our men who are 
over here." 

And every one who knows what the war condi- 
tions here are, from the front to the rear, will say 
exactly the same thing. 

The war is won, yes, but there is bitter fighting 
187 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

ahead, and we shall have many, many to care for 
and to bury. 

My heart is all sore and aching ... I cannot 
write any more. 

Fortoiseau, Tuesday, October 29. 

Such a mixture of feelings, such a whirlpool of 
opinions as I listened to yesterday. An Italian 
told me how Italy was winning the war, a French- 
man that Clemenceau was very much upset at 
Wilson's note, because if they had a revolution 
"a la Russe" in Germany, there would be one 
here; another Frenchman, that they didn't want 
the Italians to do anything but remain quiet, as 
they feared if they did "marche" it might be a 
debacle, followed by a "marche" back to Rome. 

Then the American officer, W. S., told me that 
it was just the time for London and Paris to begin 
to belittle all we had done to help win the war, so 
as to arrange the peace terms without us ... he 
also said the war was about over. He looked 
rather thin and sober. The Officers' College had 
evidently been hard work. 

Then all kinds of conflicting tales about what 
will be the state of affairs here after the war . . . 
some of them made me feel I had better pack up 
and board on any old boat and get the children 
home . . . but last night, both Joe and D. gave 
me some pretty good arguments to prove that 
France will steady herself and right herself, and 

188 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

settle the various questions that are bound to 
come, without any "sabotage." 

In the midst of our conversation came the tele- 
phoned news of the Austrian note and Luden- 
dorf's resignation. Both of equal importance. 
The German army has lost a great General, who 
saved them from real defeat, and I am sure that a 
military disaster will end the war on the battle- 
field before long. 

It seems as if I could not visualize the fact that 
it is nearly over, that the last act is unfolding its 
scenes even as I write, and that before this reaches 
you the curtain may have been rung down. What 
times to have been alive in, but oh, how weary 
our souls are, and how much sadness we shall 
carry in our hearts through the rest of our lives. 
I don't care how lonely all you women are over 
there in America, it's not anything like having 
been here within sight of the suffering, within the 
sound of the guns. ... I wonder, shall I ever 
make you feel the war, as I have felt it, in those 
days to come, when we shall have some long 
hours together and speak of all the things left 
unwritten. . . . 

Today Ivy H. is being decorated with the croix 
de guerre by General Maudhuy, with a citation 
from General Petain. It's a glorious day. I can 
see her up there near the front, standing out in 
the sunlight with shining eyes and a beating heart, 

189 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

listening to those words . . . and she deserves it, 
for she has done a great deal, and without the 
advertisement which other American women have 
gotten. . . . The R. C. ladies are being quite 
nasty about it, and they need not be, for she won 
her cross caring for the soldiers in her own can- 
teen, at Compiegne under fire. NOT in Paris. 
No cinema business about her. 

Fortoiseau, October 31, 1918. 

General H. inspected the hospital yesterday. 
He gave the nurses the devil because the men's 
shirts were not straight in the closet. He thought 
the kitchen and closets were untidy. The surgical 
side of the hospital he seemed to think was all 
right. It is a pity they are not more particular 
at the front of their men's care and food and all 
the things the service of supplies is responsible for. 
The papers received by this morning's mail are 
full of a lot of truck about the wonderful way 
everything is being done in the S. O. S. 

And yet I am wondering if some things aren't 
beginning to tell on the morale of our men. It 
seems that when the General spoke to the men in 
the hospital yesterday telling them how they 
must be wanting to go back to get at the Ger- 
mans, they nearly all said they have had enough 
of it. After the first battles at Soissons and in 
the Chateau-Thierry district they are all crazy to 

190 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

get back. I don't like to see this change. It 
would not be a good factor if they were to be in 
for a long war. I have heard so much lately that 
I can't write. 

This morning's news about Turkey and the 
Allied Conference at Versailles makes me feel that 
it is over. Even now they are deciding the terms. 
Before we know it, the news will be published 
that Germany has surrendered and accepted the 
Allies' terms. I don't think anything will be 
published until it is finished. Germany is beaten. 
She has to surrender, and for the future peace of 
the world it will be better to make a just peace. 
By "just" I mean that Germany shall pay for 
Belgian and French destruction, a certain indem- 
nity to France for the cost of the war, Alsace and 
Lorraine, a satisfactory arrangement with Great 
Britain about her fleet and her colonies, and get- 
ting out of Russia. A real getting out of Russia, 
not a sham one, and the crawling in by the back- 
door of commerce. The Balkans restored to the 
normal boundaries and Austria left to put her 
house in order herself. I fail to see why it is 
Wilson's job to "tidy up" in any European coun- 
try. I wish he would remember that there once 
was a man called Monroe who knew a thing or 
two about foreign alliances. 

If peace comes now it is the best moment for us 
all. France has a strong government. Clemen- 

191 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

ceau has not been at the helm so long that he is 
war-weary and politic-weary, and he can handle 
demobilization as it should be handled. English 
socialists are in a row with the labor party, and 
Henderson is not the strong man he was a year ago. 

We ourselves can settle our labor questions bet- 
ter now than after a long war. Our army comes 
out of it with flying colors and much real glory, 
and a certainly not decreasing ineflficiency of the 
S. O. S. will not have had time to do dangerous 
harm to the morale of our soldiers. 

I think you will find that this will be about the 
lines the Allies will follow. I can't tell what the 
"associate" will do, as I am near the war and see 
things differently than they sound as if they saw 
them in Washington. One word more, don't be- 
lieve all you are told about the attitude of Cle- 
menceau and Lloyd George towards the President, 
nor all you read in the papers. 

I am deaf from the noise of the whisperings 
against him I have listened to over here. I think 
he has more popularity in the United States than 
anywhere else. And yet I can see where there 
are certain reasons why an answer had to be 
made by somebody to Germany. The voice from 
Washington is calmer than the voices from the 
heart of countries crushed by suffering, agony 
and the facts of war. Remember the war has 
not been at America's door-step nor on her soil. 

192 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

These people are very bitter about Germany, and 
"just peace" makes them flame up in anger. 
They say there can be no justice for a country 
that has brought all this into the world. Pay, 
pay she must and shall. So, perhaps it is better 
that as long as she is beaten, an outsider should 
have spoken. I don't believe any Frenchman or 
any Englishman would have heard Germany's 
voice. The guns have deafened them as they 
have deafened me. Mind you, I am trying to 
answer you sanely and quietly and yet I have a 
terrible feeling about Germany. I can't see how 
ever I could have a German-made article in my 
house, nor touch a German hand, nor smile into a 
German face. 

I could not have answered as Wilson did, no 
more than any of these people over here could. 

Germany is the brigand who broke into the 
house, and she must pay the price just as any 
other malefactor would. And yet the war can't 
go on forever, and as long as Germany surrenders 
I suppose it's for the best. Only I would rather 
Wilson wrote those notes and not I. 

I wonder how much of the war my babies will 
remember. The other evening the eldest built a 
tall house with her blocks and the baby shoved it 
down. "Let's pretend that was a house destroyed 
by bombs from the naughty German airplanes," 
she said. And then she turned to me. "Won't 

193 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

those naughty Germans be far enough away from 
me for us to have cake again, and after the war, 
mother, will you stop talking about the naughty 
Germans?" 

I wonder what her little mind makes of it all. 
Even Joan echoes her and brings the naughty 
Germans into her play. 

Fortoiseau, November 5, 1918. 

I was in town yesterday. The apartment is all 
in order. It is really beautiful. My bedroom 
especially. Wait until you see the place. When 
I was there, somehow, I felt as if never could I 
pull up stakes and go back to my fierce country, 
which is full of so much that is fine, so much that's 
great and some things that are "rotten." 

Your newspaper clippings interested me. The 
closing statement of Baker was a classic. That 
beats anything yet. 

I am interested to see that the "notes" were 
not so popular over there as we were told here 
they were. The trouble over there is so obvious. 
No aurist can cure the habit of keeping the ear to 
the ground and listening for votes. 

The delay in W.'s letters is probably due to the 
fact that he is moving so fast. So is the war. 
Watch the Austrian front if Germany doesn't 
make peace at once. She has defeat staring her 
in the face before the New Year, no matter what 
she does and in spite of Wilson. 

194 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

I saw Colonel House in a large automobile yes- 
terday. He always wears a high hat. Over here 
only the mutes who follow funerals wear high hats 
nowadays. They are not the fashion. But House 
is rather a mute, somewhat akin to the dormouse, 
which you remember was continually pushed into 
the teapot at Alice's tea party. 

After all this is still war. It would seem as if 
in certain circles in Washington one must be a 
politician. Perhaps it is no longer the fashion to 
be a statesman in the United States. 

Fortoiseau, November 7, 1918. 

I wish you had been at lunch yesterday. Joe 
and a Frenchman, whom I shall call X. 

In the first place B. was very cheerful. He 
was the first courier to come to Paris by motor 
from the Hague. He said that the food condi- 
tions in Germany are not as bad as we think they 
are, and that there is NOT going to be any revo- 
lution there, but a constitutional monarchy, and 
that England doesn't want a revolution any more 
than France does. Furthermore, he thought that 
the war would either be over at once, or in three 
months. 

Then we got on the U. S. . . . I led on the 
Frenchman, and he got going about Wilson in an 
astonishing manner. Does he think he is KING 
of the U. S. ? And also King of France and Eng- 

195 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

land ? Nowhere are the present elections in Amer- 
ica being followed with more interest than in 
Paris . . . we have always admired the Ameri- 
cans for the silent way they have done everything, 
and now for months we hear big talk, endless 
notes . . . the other day a "letter" near the top 
of the alphabet said: "Le bon Dieu se contente 
de 12 conditions, mais ge Wilson, il lui en faut 
14. . . ." 

Later I hear more from other sources. Of how 
our army had come near defeat at a certain time 
not long ago, only a fluke had saved us from what 
might have been a disaster, the details given 
made me shiver. That moment passed . . . and 
always, they say our men are the greatest fighters, 
the most courageous soldiers, etc. BUT and the 
BUTS are inexcusable. 

The news today shows that it is over, for never 
would Germany have sent her emissaries to Foch 
now, after the conditions given to Austria, unless 
the game is up. Evidently England has asserted 
herself about the SEA questions, hence the two 
British Admirals with Foch, and the two German 
Generals have two Admirals with them. . . . 

I can't get my mind used to it . . . those ter- 
rible black days of the early summer are before 
me ... it is as I wrote you long ago. The Ger- 
man HOUSE of CARDS is crumbling ... and 
tomorrow is pregnant with peace. No need for 

196 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

the new plans ready and perhaps under way, 
which lead me to write you to watch the Austrian 
front. 

Thanksgiving Day this year will be the greatest 
Thanksgiving in our history. All the world will 
celebrate with us. 

The news of the election returns from America 
look good to me. And I am sure the work of 
readjustment will be safer with the balance of a 
Republican majority in the Senate and the 
House. We are over a year from 1920 and much 
mischief may be done in that time. 

The Russian question will have to be solved, 
and I'm wondering if a part of our army will not 
be kept to solve it. Bloodshed and anarchy like 
that must be cut down by the sword, and a 
monarchy of some kind restored. Russian igno- 
rance has not education enough to be a republic. 
They will have to be more developed than they 
are now. In twenty years, perhaps, but I doubt 
it even then. 

Fortoiseau, Wednesday, November 13, 1918. 

Monday I went into Paris early. The city was 
quiet and silent, the morning papers seemed to 
think that there might be delay in the signing of 
the armistice, because of the revolution in Ger- 
many, and a terrible, sickening fear came into 
my heart. . . . Bolshevism in Germany, TOO 
NEAR, delay might bring dissatisfaction here, 

197 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

then there might be trouble. ... I can't tell 
you the strange feeling I had, that we were on the 
edge of a volcano, that Bolshevism is as conta- 
gious as the grippe, that a spark might light a 
blaze, and the whole fabric of the existing order 
be rent asunder and anarchy march its bloody 
way over us all . . . it was ghastly terror I had, 
stupid, unreasoning . . . then a little before 
eleven the guns boomed, and I knew the armistice 
was signed. 

I went out and down the Champs-Ely sees, and 
already, as if by magic, all the buildings had flags 
out, crowds were marching in the street, singing, 
waving flags, and the men and women were kiss- 
ing the soldiers, whether they were French, or 
American or British, and every motor with sol- 
diers in it was cheered and waved to. In the 
Place de la Concorde the crowd was denser, and 
as I passed, a golden laurel crown was being 
placed on the head of "Strasbourg," and the 
crowd went mad . . . the tears came into my 
eyes. So often and so long I have passed that 
statue with its face swathed in old crepe ... so 
many have been killed for this day to dawn, all 
the suffering I have seen in these four long years 
made my heart ache and even in the joy of the 
HOUR of VICTORY, the sadness was there, and 
always that strange fear of tomorrow. I can't 
tell why I have it so, for I STILL have it, and 

198 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

last night I lay awake wondering if it would be 
safe for me to move my children into Paris on 
Thursday . . . perhaps it's the "let-down" now 
it's all over that has unnerved me so. 

Yesterday I went over to lunch with the General 
at Melun, and blurted out all my fears to him as 
if he had been my father; he answered me by 
facts and statements, such as these: Anarchy is 
bred of defeat, this country is a victorious coun- 
try, with nothing to "Bolshevise" for, the man 
at the head of the government is a strong one, the 
man at the head of the army is a strong one too, 
the morale of the troops is GOOD, no chance of 
their going up in the air. The socialists in France 
are a really small minority, and consist only of 
the city workers; money in France, land in France, 
is so divided up that too many people have prop- 
erty, and any anarchistic movement would be 
instantly stopped. And from his information, 
there is no indication of any feeling of trouble, 
for the joy of victory is genuine and all through 
France. The ovation to Clemenceau at the 
"seance" on Monday was magnificent and he is 
just the man to handle the demobilization. In 
fact certain plans are already afoot, concerning, 
for instance, "allocations" which it is proposed 
to continue to the woman until two months after 
her man has been home, to give each returning 
soldier a bonus of about five hundred francs to 

199 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

start off again, to at once begin the transforming 
of the usine de guerre into usines for the con- 
struction of what is destroyed in France, for all 
the necessary implements of reconstruction and 
normal life ... no "chomage" to be allowed. 

He seemed to think that the German revolution 
was in hand, and would not go as the Russian 
one did. . . . 

And yet when I read of the general strike in 
Switzerland in the papers this morning that same 
sickening fear crept into my heart again. So I 
called the General up and told him I was worry- 
ing again, and he was emphatic in his assurances 
that there is no reason or sense in my getting so 
worked up. 

The funny part of it is that I am sure I am 
crazy to stew this way and am mad at myself . . . 
it seems as if after all the anxieties of last spring 
and summer, when I really did try to keep brave 
with the guns booming as they did and the news 
worse every day, I ought now to be completely 
relieved and happy. Perhaps it's nerves too long 
controlled. I only hope it is not premonition 
. . . and whatever it is, believe me it is making 
me a nuisance to myself . . . write me. And 
write me true what people who know are saying 
in New York. 

Will write next time from Paris, and I hope in a 
more peaceful frame of mind. 

200 



KATHERINE BLAKE 

Later. 

I've read over all I've written, and I am ashamed 
of myself . . . there is no earthly reason why I 
should feel this way. It's just my damned old 
SELF, the same old self which has always been 
my greatest enemy. At this hour, the hour of 
France's victory, it is an insult to her, to her mar- 
velous army, to her unselfish people, to her dead, 
to her great men in public and private life, to 
doubt of her in this way. And I really don't. 
France has weathered the storm in all its black- 
ness, she has faced the possibility of defeat, and 
has always had enough of the best in human 
nature in her people to come through even the 
darkest hour. What right have I, who really 
have not suffered through the war, who have lost 
no one I cared for, to cast the shadow of doubt on 
the glorious day of victory? 

France shall emerge greater than before, tem- 
pered by her sufferings and able to handle all the 
vexed questions of "readjustment" as she can 
well handle them. My glooms are nonsense, and 
I almost feel I ought not to mail this letter. 

I may, and I may not. If I do, let it be a self- 
revelation, and try and like me in spite of my 
glaring cowardice. I remember once when I was 
a very little girl, there was much talk of a comet 
approaching the earth, and that I used to lie in 
bed at night and worry lest it would strike the 

201 



SOME LETTERS: 1917-1918 

earth. I got into a panic about it for nights 
. . . today I've got just that same idiotic kind of 
a panic. 

And I ought to be taken by the back of the 
neck and shaken hard. I'm doing it mentally to 
myself. 

In this hour it is up to each and all to keep our 
courage high, and our faith in France and Eng- 
land must be the mainstay of our hearts. They 
have been great in adversity, may they be even 
greater in the new era coming in their victory 
. . . "Vive la France," and "Vive la Republique." 



202 



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